Goth Leo in the snow

[QLeo]

Well, that was an interesting morning. TL;DR - I'm glad we got the all-season tyres we did late last year.

There didn't seem to be much snow this morning, but I had to take a parcel the 6 miles to the post office. There are several steep sections in the hills along the single-track road around these parts, but I didn't expect any issues. I got up the first one nae bother, and settled in. But then, a mile or so from a steeper one, someone coming along the other way stopped me and said he'd failed to get up the hill, Cnoc a' Bhainne. I said I'd give it a try.

(I have some dashcam footage of this, but can't see a way to upload it - sorry
EDIT: Sorted - see links ar end)

This hill starts and ends with 90 degree bends, and typically requires about 35-40% power to keep moving. Goth Leo moved a little - I can't say twitched or snaked - but soon got himself sorted and although at the very beginning I could feel a loss of grip, at no point did I feel anywhere near a break point or in any danger. At the top 90 degree bend, Leo behaved impeccably, turning confidently. There is then a steep slalom of a section, before going down the other side, Srón. Here, ABS gets tested, but apart from an initial hesitance, I felt really certain he would, indeed, stop.

When I got into the village, folk I spoke to said the journey was carnage slightly earlier, with vans off the road etc. (I then realised I had forgotten to bring the parcel with me, proving they'll sell MG4s to world-class idiots, so be careful out there.)

On the way back, on the first part of Srón, I saw a light truck coming back towards me down the hill, but without reverse lights on. He managed to stop, and I managed to get past. Again, this hill needs a lot of power to get up, but again, the car was sure footed. I did have a friendly tussle with some sheep on the road, who planned to stop me at the steepest section, but gave in at the last minute.

Coming down the other side, at Cnoc a' Bhainne, there was a car at the bottom. I stopped to see if they needed assistance but she was OK, though shaken as she couldn't get her car up the hill at all. Someone was coming to collect her.

So all in all, while Goth Leo is no Panda 4x4, the car from which we came, I was very happy that he is remarkably capable in conditions that leave many other cars struggling. BUT... I would not have liked to have tried that with the factory summer tyres. Nothing against them, but not for conditions like today.

If I'm missing something about uploading video, do let me know.

EDIT: Now uploaded to youtube.
Link 1 -
Link 2 -

 

[siteguru]

Upload the video to YouTube or similar, then post a link to it?

 

[JonnyG]

We used to use

Flickr

The safest and most inclusive global community of photography enthusiasts. The best place for inspiration, connection, and sharing!

www.flickr.com

and link to that. Not tried it in a while though !

https://live.staticflickr.com/video/53516643893/bda99fcfdb/1080p.mp4?s=eyJpIjo1MzUxNjY0Mzg5MywiZSI6MTcwNzM5ODYyMiwicyI6ImUxYjRjMzBiM2FmNDBmZGU2YTMzNDg5NzU1ZGQ5NmNmZDg0YjAxMjMiLCJ2IjoxfQ

mmm .......... test Flickr video not working very well !!

 

[QLeo]

Upload the video to YouTube or similar, then post a link to it?

Thanks. Done.

 

[JonnyG]

Nicely driven ... sure those All Season tyres made a huge difference

 

[Ejaydee]

Was the car in snow mode or did you leave it in normal?

We rarely get snow here (west Cornwall), but in January this year we has a few inches of the 'white stuff' followed by several days of -5 to -7 degrees and I was very impressed with the car in snow mode while it was on the ground (and the following ice layer). I still have the stock tyres on and the car was fine, only losing traction for a split second on one occasion. Like yourself, we have several steepish hills, narrow lanes and sharp bends, so there was a bit of carnage where some locals panicked (not having seen snow for several years) and lost control!!

The hardest bit was getting off my drive, because we live on the north side of a hill, and the snow had settled quite deeply, but clearing it with a shovel was enough to get out. The main roads were gritted, but the small lanes weren't. We have the much more normal rain here now .

 

[Rolfe]

Jeez, @QLeo, that looks nerve-racking.

I've done similar in Prospero (the Golf GTi) after he had winter tyres fitted all round - done following an inability to get up a brae in the village the first winter I had him, when he was like Bambi on an ice rink. Although we had some snow here yesterday it was nothing like that and the roads were all clear.

So although I followed your lead on the tyres, I've not yet encountered conditions to test them out, and I think I still have some nervousness as to whether they'll be up to the standard of the Hankooks Prospero had. These videos are extremely reassuring!

As to going to the post office without the item you intended to post, join the club. Except, the post office in the village here is barely half a mile away, and even if I've cycled there it's not such a huge imposition to go back for it!

ETA: I just noticed the sheep on the road, and their lack of reaction. I've noticed the same thing with Caliban. Whereas sheep were majorly spooked by Prospero and used to leap to their feet and run around in random directions in a panic when he came past, bloody lucky they didn't run under his wheels, they just glance incuriously at Caliban and go back to chewing the cud.

 

[QLeo]

Was the car in snow mode or did you leave it in normal?

We rarely get snow here (west Cornwall), but in January this year we has a few inches of the 'white stuff' followed by several days of -5 to -7 degrees and I was very impressed with the car in snow mode while it was on the ground (and the following ice layer). I still have the stock tyres on and the car was fine, only losing traction for a split second on one occasion. Like yourself, we have several steepish hills, narrow lanes and sharp bends, so there was a bit of carnage where some locals panicked (not having seen snow for several years) and lost control!!

The hardest bit was getting off my drive, because we live on the north side of a hill, and the snow had settled quite deeply, but clearing it with a shovel was enough to get out. The main roads were gritted, but the small lanes weren't. We have the much more normal rain here now .

Yes, I put the car into snow mode. This was because I assume it's more careful with traction control with it on, but for sure one of the things it does it put the car into low regen. I have had a few dodgy moments in icy conditions around slow corners, which I realised was the high regen - icy corners I would never, ever brake on, but of course a slight lift of the accelerator is equivalent to braking.

 

[Rolfe]

That's very interesting and good to remember.

 

[QLeo]

Jeez, @QLeo, that looks nerve-racking.

I've done similar in Prospero (the Golf GTi) after he had winter tyres fitted all round - done following an inability to get up a brae in the village the first winter I had him, when he was like Bambi on an ice rink. Although we had some snow here yesterday it was nothing like that and the roads were all clear.

So although I followed your lead on the tyres, I've not yet encountered conditions to test them out, and I think I still have some nervousness as to whether they'll be up to the standard of the Hankooks Prospero had. These videos are extremely reassuring!

As to going to the post office without the item you intended to post, join the club. Except, the post office in the village here is barely half a mile away, and even if I've cycled there it's not such a huge imposition to go back for it!

ETA: I just noticed the sheep on the road, and their lack of reaction. I've noticed the same thing with Caliban. Whereas sheep were majorly spooked by Prospero and used to leap to their feet and run around in random directions in a panic when he came past, bloody lucky they didn't run under his wheels, they just glance incuriously at Caliban and go back to chewing the cud.

Do you know, it really wasn't nerve-racking. I quite enjoyed it, in fact, though that would have changed pronto had the car started slipping.

The sheep here are pretty street-wise, so don't really react even with a loud ICE car bearing down on them. They do tend to do a just-in-time thing to get out the way, though, so trust is a two-way street. They're born and bred on the roads, so the road safety is passed down the generations. They usually move when they see a car, but occasionally with Goth Leo if they're facing the other way we may want to make sure they're aware of us.

 

[Rolfe]

Do you know, it really wasn't nerve-racking. I quite enjoyed it, in fact, though that would have changed pronto had the car started slipping.

The sheep here are pretty street-wise, so don't really react even with a loud ICE car bearing down on them. They do tend to do a just-in-time thing to get out the way, though, so trust is a two-way street. They're born and bred on the roads, so the road safety is passed down the generations. They usually move when they see a car, but occasionally with Goth Leo if they're facing the other way we may want to make sure they're aware of us.

The ones round here never seem to learn. When I took Prospero for a last Sport-mode spin round the Meldons in April, the evening before his insurance was transferred to Caliban, ewes and lambs together were scattering like chaff in the wind.

A few weeks later, in Caliban, I was driving similar roads on the Yorkshire moors and got little more than an incurious stare.

 

[Rolfe]

That road (though only about half the width) reminds me a bit of the A702 one January evening when I was trying to get home from work. It was snowing heavily, and just in front of me it was blocked by a BMW whose driver had taken a downhill corner too fast, skidded into the other carriageway, and hit an oncoming car on his way to the safety barrier. I was close to the front of the queue that built up, facing uphill. (Damn lucky it wasn't me he hit. Prospero was saved for another careless BMW driver to write off nearly 11 years later.)

We sat there and we sat there, with the snow getting deeper and deeper all the time. At one point I had the BMW driver's mother in my car, as I had been running the engine to keep warm, and she was wearing lightweight clothes and pointless little pumps. And bemoaning her son's bad driving, with me telling her to zip her lip if the police were within earshot.

Eventually the slightly injured were transferred to an ambulance, and one of the crashed cars was pulled off the carriageway so the ambulance could get through. This left me with what looked like a clear road home. Snow now about three inches deep, unmarked apart from footprints, and the hill (the Flotterstone brae) was quite steep. There was a cop in front of me, so I rolled down my window and asked if it was now OK to drive on. I got an incredulous look and a shrug. He obviously thought nobody was going anywhere on that road. (And indeed I could see that a lot of the cars behind and around me were unable to move.) But he hadn't said no, so I just put Prospero into drive, moved off, inched past the remaining crashed car, and got on my way.

Leaving a slightly gobsmacked cop behind me. Let's hear it for winter tyres. God knows how long it took to clear the road of the dozens of summer-tyred cars now completely immobile. I don't know, I was home 15 minutes later.

 

[OriginalBigAl]

Nicely done. If you could do something about your memory you could get the postal delivery contract. Mind you, given the last few years, would you want it?

 

[Rolfe]

These posties are tough.

(This was the weather that prompted me to get the winter tyres for Prospero.)

 

[QLeo]

These posties are tough.

View attachment 23796

(This was the weather that prompted me to get the winter tyres for Prospero.)

Our posties are fearless, but as the post didn't get through to the village today, they had no reason to test anyone else's nerves.

 

[QLeo]

These posties are tough.

View attachment 23796

(This was the weather that prompted me to get the winter tyres for Prospero.)

Just had our post delivered. David the Postie apologised for missing yesterday, as he went off the road up Srón, which you can see in one of the videos I posted.

This is mildly surprising, as our posties have such experience in these conditions, but makes me even happier with our car's performance and capabilities.

 

[Rolfe]

I would NOT like to go off that road, I can tell you.

Extra query. Have the geographers struck on updating the Gaelic accent conventions as per the directive that only "grave" accents are to be used henceforth? In normal usage it's now "sròn". (I checked the OS map but that gives it as "Strone" which is the same as the other example I know of at Dalmally - except, I did notice this in relation to the Dalmally feature.)

I'm mildly narked about the change because it changes the spelling of my own name too!

 

[QLeo]

I would NOT like to go off that road, I can tell you.

Extra query. Have the geographers struck on updating the Gaelic accent conventions as per the directive that only "grave" accents are to be used henceforth? In normal usage it's now "sròn". (I checked the OS map but that gives it as "Strone" which is the same as the other example I know of at Dalmally - except, I did notice this in relation to the Dalmally feature.)

View attachment 23812

I'm mildly narked about the change because it changes the spelling of my own name too!

I don't know whether there are new conventions, but there's a lot of dirty work with anglicisations, that's for sure. But place names are the best of things, and the worst of things, I maintain a place names web site, and here we have names with Gaelic, Norse and Scots origins. Sometimes, Norse morphed to Gaelic, which was then anglicised (Suilven being an example) Some arguably have all three (Inverkirkaig). It's all a delightful mess. Could comment more, but this forum is about the MG4 (which we know has an Asian name derivation meaning "saggy bottom)

 

[Rolfe]

Really interested to hear about your place-names web site, maybe you could link to it.

Not to derail, but I was just interested in the accent. I'm not sure when they did it, but the Gaelic gurus decided that one accent was quite enough, and changed all of them to the "grave", dropping the "acute" completely. Irish seems to have gone the other way.

But there was a difference, particularly with the letter "o". So while the word for a nose is pronounced "srown", with the accent changed to a grave it looks like "srawn", which it isn't. I was just interested that you had used the acute, which actually indicates the correct pronunciation.

 

[QLeo]

Really interested to hear about your place-names web site, maybe you could link to it.

Not to derail, but I was just interested in the accent. I'm not sure when they did it, but the Gaelic gurus decided that one accent was quite enough, and changed all of them to the "grave", dropping the "acute" completely. Irish seems to have gone the other way.

But there was a difference, particularly with the letter "o". So while the word for a nose is pronounced "srown", with the accent changed to a grave it looks like "srawn", which it isn't. I was just interested that you had used the acute, which actually indicates the correct pronunciation.

Oh good grief - you're absolutely right, and I got the keyboard incantation wrong. I sort of just did it and carried on, rather than checking. Thanks for pointing that out. I'll not correct in an edit, or these posts will make no sense, but it's worse than no accent at all.

The web site is Place Names of Assynt - Ainmean-Àite Asainte
At some stage I'll get tired of paying for the domain myself (it previously got a little funding) and move it to a subdomain of my own but not for the foreseeable. Here are the hills in question:
Sròn · Place Names of Assynt - Ainmean-Àite Asainte and Cnoc a' Bhainne (frequent name) · Place Names of Assynt - Ainmean-Àite Asainte

I should add that, while I maintain and "own" the site, the translation work is a community effort directed by key Gaelic speakers.

As these things happen, we have just had someone to tea from Kinlochewe way, who has been asked to do weekly guided walks centred around place names during the summer. He's a Gaelic speaker, so those should be good.