The Cat House: On The Road Again

I understand now the old Simon& Garfunkel lyrics, “on a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.” You see, as you know, our big trip has been interrupted because of my misplaced chivalry & the resulting injury. However, itchiness of foot was starting to reach intolerable levels, so in the face of the biggest low pressure complex anyone has seen for years, we set off, & southwards at that. We were absolutely determined to spend some time with Michelle & her husband Paul. We had met Michelle albeit briefly, last time we were in Dunedin, when she made the trip in to town & visited us at my son’s place.

The summit of somewhere or other in The Catlins

So blithely off we set. The weather in Dunedin up til yesterday afternoon had been quite pleasant, with just some strong winds. Yesterday, however was a different matter. By the time we left from the Meridian mall in Dunedin after what was, for us at least & I’m sure for both my sons as well, very painful & reluctant farewells, it wasn’t particularly nice. Lowering grey overcast with the first dustings of snow on the hills up the back. But only if you looked real close. Anyway, round about Milton, we ran into a little front & had our first little flurries of snow. Quite exciting it was, having never driven in snow before. Little did we know. We topped the tank off in Balclutha, just to be sure & set off happily along the Catlins road.

Mother nature was very kind to us. Our first sign that things were going to turn pear shaped was the odd little mound of snow here & there in the middle of the road. Easy stuff. I can handle this, so on we merrily went. As you can see, by the time we got to the summit of somewhere or other with , I am sure what would be a beautiful view under better circumstances, the snow was starting to be a serious factor in our trip. But we carried on. And on & on & on, with the snow getting heavier & heavier & heavier. Sherman coped with it all very well. I engaged the free wheeling hubs fairly early on & just used 4WD as needed, which basically became a permanent thing. I must say that at this point, I was starting to feel like a real Southern man, driving through snow with set of chains & a carton of Speights in the back. I must admit to being somewhat reluctant to use the chains, as I didn’t want Sherman bursting into song when I put them on him. (Sorry, that was a bad one I know.)

I must admit to being rather surprised to see a few camper vans being driven by what I considered to be very foolhardy souls & , indeed, in one spot came across one in trouble, where two of them had tried to pass in a spot where there was only one set of wheel ruts in the snow & lost traction & needed help from your ever present country policeman. Don’t ever say a word against the police to me again. This poor guy had been patrolling this particular stretch of snow bound road helping numpties that don’t have enough sense to stay off roads with 6 inches or so of snow on them while driving high sided front wheel drive vans.

Snow, snow & more snow.. All over the road at that

Sherman, of course, handled it beautifully. Assisted of course in no small measure by myself. I was lucky, I guess, in that the weather got progressively worse, so by the time it got absolutely dreadful, we were that close to Michelle’s place that it made sense to carry on. By the time we got to the Quarry Hills area, the snow was quite heavy. We finished up driving on virgin snow fall. the road was that little used that the only marks on it were the foot prints of resident hares looking in vain for a meal.. Damn we were glad to get to Michelle & Pauls, even though we didn’t know at the time that it was their place. I just decided it looked like a likely spot to call in & ask DIRECTIONS….. Sorry Michy, I couldn’t resist that one. So, you can imagine our relief when we spied this diminutive figure in a red apron waving frantically from the front lawn. Our destination at last & yes, it is true, snow doesn't make any sound at all when it's falling. Quite eery.