Winter in Timperley

We have enjoyed some unusual scenes over the past few days.

It snowed on Monday night and continued to accumulate during Tuesday.  This is unusual close to central Manchester.  So unusual that Jamie recorded a visual diary of his commute to work from Altrincham to Manchester.

With abandoned cars littering the roads, the residents of our street stayed at home or used the trams, which surprised everyone by continuing to work despite the expectation of ‘leaves on the line’.

There’s now even somewhere for passengers heading towards Manchester from Timperley to shelter from the elements, albeit less adequate than their predecessor!  Some new trams, designed for ‘rush hour’ use, with narrower seats and wider passageways, have been operating since before Christmas, but I have yet to capture one ‘on film’.

The canal remained frozen. 

Drivers played at ‘dodgems’.

We remained at home.

On Wednesday the crisp, clear day enticed us out, but (and the situation remains so) we couldn’t justify getting the car out as the roads remained treacherous.  So we walked to Hale and enjoyed a game of Monopoly with some friends whose school was shut but whose mum needed to work.  Then we had fun in their garden.

 

The walk home made us quite glad we hadn’t bothered with the car.

Thursday brought another crisp day, with the sun beating down from a clear blue sky, causing the thermometer to rise to a spectacular minus 5C, the coldest I can recall it at midday around here.

It was lovely, with a very light wind and crisp compacted snow underfoot, though a trip to the dentist by car did test my skills of manoeuvring through deep snow in the remoter parts of a car park in Urmston!

We didn’t have to venture far to get some more wintry images, some of them from angles normally only accessible by boat.

A full set of images, mainly for H and the children, is here.

Hopefully it won’t be too long before we can actually go somewhere more interesting – I’m yearning for the winter tyres we have in Canada that make driving in these conditions relatively easy!