NEWSFLASH.Madman in 23 year old VW Scirocco drives 43 miles to Mansfield in snow!

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Durocco.Awesome 4x4 twin engined Scirocco.I want one!.

Yes, this morning, against my better judgement I decided to attempt the 43 mile drive from Sleaford to Mansfield...and ,amazingly!,I made it -).

To be fair it had not really snowed much during the evening in Sleaford, so the car only had a very light "icing sugar" coating this morning. Mansfield though,as I later found out, was a very different story!.

According to conversations that I had with several people at Kings Mill who have been on site overnight, the snow has been coming down in buckets, the result of course is that most area's of the hospital site have perhaps 8-12 inches of snow, and, where the plough has pushed aside material from the roads, it can be found in huge piles over 2 feet in height!

Of course I did not know this as I set of at 7am, and, after making a brief stop at Cranwell service station on the A17,where I ended up helping them to open the pumps, I made my way to work.

The A17 was pretty clearwith only a light "slush" on the road surface,but by the time I got to Newark the depth of extra snowfall since last night was obvious and more of it was now on the carriageway.

The A617 to Mansfield was not that much worse, that was until I got to Bilsthorpe when the road became a little to white for comfort, and the dual sections of the road at the Rainworth bypass and the Mansfield bypass had been reduced to one lane, only used by idiots and people in 4x4's!.This was pretty much the way it remained from that point until I arrived at Kings Mill, but just as I thought that I had cleared all of the obstacles I found a few more in the last few hundred yards.

The slip road from the main carriageway into the rear of the site was very slippery, and as I pulled into the site entrance the incline as I went through the gate appeared to have not been cleared causing the car to scramble for grip.I managed to crawl up the slope eventually, but then when I turned into the compound where my Dept is located I found that the entrance to the Dept car park had been blocked by a huge wall of snow made by the snow plough!. I managed to "abandon" the car in another area, and after wading knee deep up to the entrance to my Dept I finally arrived at 0940...ish!.

More snow is expected today....i think an overnight stop at my folks house in Mansfield Woodhouse could be on the cards !.

A request to (some) 4x4 drivers

Please,please could you stop driving right up against my rear bumper as I try to make my way along some pretty awful roads!. Ok, I know you have a 4x4 and that I may be holding YOU up, but sadly I don't have 4 wheel drive (unlike Anson Clements Durocco!) so I have to be a bit careful. Oh, and to the prat (pr@) in the "60" plate Range Rover who decided it would be fun to spray all of the pedestrians on Berry Hill Road in Mansfield the other day...you are quite simply a total Tw@!

Have a nice day !

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A name from my past,heard again.......

Whilst doing some surfing, brought on after my wife mentioned about an air crash that happened in August of 1984, i found that after all these years at least some things that I think are buried deep in my memory..actually are !.

The story in the Sleaford Standard told of an air crash involving a Flt Lt from RAF Cranwell named Bob Bailey, and she asked me if i knew him as my RAF career really began at Cranwell in March of '84. I did not remember the name she mentioned, but something about the story stirred a memory of a fella that I once knew who went by the name of Wing Commander Ralph Reid-Buckle , a very fiery man who I had met during my service not in the RAF, but as a young cadet in the Air Training Corpse (384 Squadron,Mansfield).

I remember Wng Cdr Reid-Buckle and I having a very short conversation at the Beckingham Rifle Range just outside Newark-Upon-Trent a few years before i joined the RAF.

I had just started to fire off a few rounds at the ranges 600 Yrd targets with my Lee Enfield 303 rifle, when he walked along the row of shooters and stopped behind me.
"Nice shooting young man" he said, "I bet you are pleased with your aim?". Well, of course this was a great honour, me, being complimented by such a senior officer on my marksmanship skills!.
"Thank you sir", i remember saying, "i am trying for my marksmanship badge".
"Excellent" he said,"but next time, try to hit the target at the end of the range and not put six holes in the range lane marker sign!".
What!.I looked closely at my small lane marker sign that lay slightly to the left of my guns muzzle, and there they were!....six bullet holes which i had punched through the wooden sign at a range of..oh....six inches!.......... nicely group though !.

Ralph Reid-Buckle was a "proper" gentleman and an officer, even down to his handlebar moustache and swagger stick.He died with 10 others when the Vickers Varsity they were in at the time crashed on it's way to Liverpool Airport.3 People survived when it plummeted 3'000 feet and burst into flames.

25 years ago this month. R.I.P to you all, and condolences to their surviving families.