Although it has been pretty much close to zero throughout December the valley has not seen a great deal of snow or even rain come to that. It has been pretty dry.
What little snow we had the day before the family were over was gone again before they left and the heavy fall a week ago was removed by a couple of days when the temperature rose to +4 C.
So, once the parents had got over they brought with them the goodies for my French friends (I like somebody else doing the shopping, it’s a bit like using Tesco’s on-line). Of course I then have to get them out to people.
Deliveries can only be made at the weekend because of course everybody else on the planet (except my neighbours) works, and I can’t afford to leave things too late because of the vagaries in the weather.
It was sod’s law that the Sunday before the holidays when I had organised the long run out to Cambrai would be the day that we had more snow than the previous week.
I knew that life was going to be difficult straight away because the car wouldn’t negotiate the backroad over the hill; I had to drive down the valley and out via the main road.
Last year the family got snowed off the week before Christmas. This year we had the cunning plan of organising ourselves two weeks earlier. This accounted for everything except Kent getting all of its snow, two weeks earlier.
The weather in France has been most unusual with very cold air coming from the north with great waftings of warm air coming from the south. Where it meets in the middle we are getting snow. We are also getting crazy temperatures. Freezing in the north but almost balmy a few hundred kilometres away to the south.
Near the coast we have been reasonably spared but with winds often touching 100 kph any snow that has been left lying has been blown across the roads.