Big J

We very much do. It's done 700 trouble free km for us up to now, but the full load seemed to be a little too much.

Collecting our forwarder in Gothenburg didn't go so well today. No issues on the drive over, but shortly after loading and pulling out of the port, rolled over a rough bump and snapped a leaf spring on the front right. 26 year old, fatigued metal I guess combined with its first full load in a while (I presume). We definitely weren't overweight as everything was weighed. We had to limp to the customs inspection centre before midday, offloaded the forwarder, found a garage to repair the truck and now getting the train across central southern Sweden. Not a day to be repeated, especially not when you've been up since 01:00.

Hmmmmm. Is society f*cked? Yes, probably. Is this something new? Probably not. Cheap credit is something that I think is underpinning so much of what has gone wrong recently, and what continues to deteriorate. Not only does it allow people to extend themselves way beyond their personal means, but I feel it also undermines the very notion of value, and what something is worth. Many things in life are much cheaper than they once were, but most of the big ticket items aren't. Houses and cars for instance. As an example, the start price for a Ford Focus in 1998 when first launched was just under £9900. RRP for the base model now is over £26k, whereas £9900 adjusted for inflation is only £20500. This debasing of the value of things has been allowed to happen slowly over a period of time, and has been largely hidden by rock bottom interest rates. Now that rates are rising, it's become rapidly apparent that no one can afford it. It feels like a large adjustment is coming. As someone very rightly pointed out earlier in the thread, it should not take two people working full time just to pay rent on a home. Our crappy mini-farmhouse in Devon was relisted after a fairly superficial decoration (excepting a bathroom replacement that was long overdue) at £1750/PCM by our greedy, multi millionaire former landlord. For 103 square metres and 3 bedrooms. He's already had to drop it to £1500, but who the hell can afford that for a 3 bed house that's largely unheatable? I digress. We need as a society to go back to a time where credit isn't the first choice but the last resort. If we live life on credit, we're beholden to banks and are in effect in indentured servitude. All this wonderful modern technology that's available to us should be used to improve our quality of life, not used to find new ways to repress us.

I think our slope is small enough not to require winching! At least I hope it is!

It was an interesting evening, looking at the mechanics of it! There are two types of snow maker on the hill. The tall poles are driven by compressed air and the turbine type ones use what looks like a jet engine to propel a fine mist out. Both require the air temperature to be 4 or 5c below freezing, and due to the warming temperatures last night (minus 11 at 18:00 and minus 4 at 22:00), we shut down the snow production for the time being. The water is drawn from the lake and is driven up the hill by the largest water pump I've personally ever seen (110kw). Whilst the snow is being made, someone is always on site to supervise (24hrs a day). I don't think anyone is paid to do it. It's all volunteers. This was my first shift, and I'll certainly be back. I've never been skiing, but intend to learn. They are also eying me up to drive the piste grooming machine with my machine driving experience. That'll be something for the CV! This isn't the exact machine they have, but it's almost identical.

Warming fairly quickly now. Up to minus 6c. We had a great afternoon skating on the lake (only my second time on skates) and then I've been helping at the ski slope with that snow production. First time driving a snow mobile too!

Winter perfection. The misty cloud on the hill is snow production at the ski slope.

Minus 21.2c. 1.5m above the ground, away from the house.

Nice! That's the difference 400km makes! It always seems funny when people down here say that they don't get proper winter. Nearly minus 20c feels like proper winter to me! 😁

It's very close to minus 20 here. 18.8 below to be exact. It'd be nice to see it actually make that. I see that one weather station a few km outside the village is already at -20.3c.

Machine is being delivered on Tuesday to Gothenburg! So we'll be starting in January

The high today was minus 10c. I had a couple of spare hours so cleared 1.5 tennis courts of snow off the ice on the lake. And made a wiggly 'skills' course at the back. Bloody knackering, but looking forward to taking the kids on it tomorrow. Ice is only 8cm at the moment, but with near enough minus 20c expected overnight, it should reach 11-12cm by lunch tomorrow.

It was tucked into a buff. Only did 24km today as it really was very cold. The Garmin head unit refused to work unless in my pocket and I had a spoke snap too! It got down to minus 15.8c before starting to rise again. It was stunning though:

Minus 14c here. Minus 10c the forecast high today, with minus 17c forecast for tonight. Could hit minus 20c though, as it seems the forecast is usually a few degrees warmer than reality.

Absolutely stunning 😍

A couple of snaps from today

I believe that 4x4s with summer tyres on are probably the most dangerous cars on the road in snow and ice. Enough traction to get going, but as we all know, an all wheel drive system does nothing to help you stop. An all season tyre will help you stop as well as it helps you get going. Given that there aren't many drawbacks, I'm a bit confused as to why you're against them.

Minus 7 overnight. Warmed to minus 4 now and snowing. A couple more inches in total so far this morning

I mean that MEP is a bit of alright, if we're being fair. If you were a Qatari sheik with stacks of cash lying about, wouldn't you throw her a bit too? 😆 A Merry Christmas to you and yours in the land of Eternal Rain

You do live in just about the mildest place in the entirety of the UK. To judge the merits of a winter suitable tyre on the basis of where you're located isn't logical. I would say that for anywhere outside the lower ground of the west country or the south coast, a strong case can be made for all seasons.

They wear slightly quicker if driven year round. A little bit less grip in summer (but it's fractional). In my mind, all seasons are maybe 5-10% worse in summer when driven at the limit, and who does that? In winter, they are so, so much better when conditions get tough that they are the difference between you being able to move and not. And in normal UK winter conditions, they will perform better too.

You are wrong there. We had a C4 Grand Picasso years ago. Came with summer tyres. I ordered cheap all seasons in December from Germany. Before they came, we had 2 inches of snow. Our drive to the house at that time was gently to moderately uphill, with a sharp corner you wouldn't be able to carry any speed through. It took me a solid 5 minutes to get up on summer tyres. It was 150m. The abs system had a panic attack at the top, the whole dash lit up and had to be recovered to Citroen. In the meantime, the tyres arrived. They were changed whilst at the garage. Two weeks later, another 2 inches of snow and it drove up like it wasn't there. Not only that, but we had more snow a few weeks later. I was climbing a steep hill out of a village called Ecclesmachen when I encountered a transit reversing down. He leaned out the window so I stopped. He said I'd never get up there (6 inches of slushy snow). I reassured him that I'd be fine and pulled away effortlessly. That is the difference between summer and all season tyres in British snow.

My original post was suggesting all season tyres, which offer the best of both worlds. The climate in the UK is obviously very different to Scandinavia, but equally, the Scandinavians get through winter with a lot less drama. Scenes of cars sliding sideways down minor hills are ridiculous. Totally avoidable

I'll get on my soap box and dig up this thread again! This video from Gloucestershire is a day or so old, but it really does illustrate how comically awful summer tyres are in winter conditions. We've had conditions like this here in Sweden repeatedly over the last month with no issues whatsoever. Drivers crash in Gloucestershire heavy snow WWW.BBC.CO.UK Video footage shows cars piling up and a bus crashing as a cold snap in the UK brings icy and snowy weather.