Bbc4 1963 big freeze.

[egbert]

My old man farmed through 2 winters which killed half the blackface ewes on the hill - 63 and 47.
(some neighbours lost the lot, after bringing the ewes into in/bye, which promptly filled up level with the tops of the walls.)

I've never endured anything remotely like it.

 

[puntabrava]

I remember 63 , it had nothing on January 82 in Ceredigion, never seen snow as high as the telegraph poles come so quick , roads blocked in front of your eyes

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you

 

[puntabrava]

I only drink the stuff from the islands that’s been lost for 12 years,
and without h20 unlike you soft northerners.

I gave a moocall device to someone a few weeks ago as I thought it to be shytte, but asked for a bottle of single malt. The problem is the daft southerners think whisky is whisky. Knowing my luck will end up with a bottle of grouse.

 

[Jerry]

Mum and Dad got married in 63, in the middle of the snow, At Moreton church on the edge of Dartmoor.

@egbert might well know the church.

I have a picture of them walking from the church to dads Austin 7. The sides of the path were 3 or 4 feet deep in snow.

The wedding party managed to make it to Bovey Castle for the reception which entailed a number of tractors and horses to pull cars along the way.

Most hadspend the night there....unplanned!!

The next day they were due to drive to Sussex to see my father's side of the family.

My great uncle had a haulage company and helped them down to Bovey where the road cleared a bit.

They made it to Dorchester tday and had to find a pub to spend the night. But did make it to Lewes the following day.

 

[Baker9]

Reading this prompted me to get the installation/instruction book out for my Grant oil boiler which was put in 8 years ago when the house was refurbished. On my set up, the 22mm condensate drain pipe leaves the boiler and runs down the side towards the back at about a 30° angle and goes into the open end of a larger pipe which then leaves the house to eventually reach the little soak away.
I imagine that if the vertical bit of the exposed pipe outside were to freeze up, any backed up condensate would eventually spill out of the open pipe onto the boiler cupboard floor where we would see it.

Does anyone know what sort of quantities of condensate we are talking about?

For a 30Kw boiler, it produces 3.5 litres an hour that it is running

 

[BobGreen]

Told by my older brother I’m on here age 4 along with him age 12 on our local canal. Photo taken by our father !
Wonder if parents now would let their children on a frozen canal while they took a picture !!

 

[michael N123]

Nearly watched it then seen that waste of oxygens name

 

[jed]

Old man reckons 63 grand father said 47 was worse .
In 82 I remember sitting in a french lesson in school the heating system had blown and it was minus 12 inside the classroom school closed and we were sent home the previous night a temp of minus 27 had been recorded at shrawbury.

 

[JWL]

It must have snowed fairish in early 64 as well as my mother was pregnant with me and had a helicopter drop food etc to the cottage just outside Winchcombe a couple of times as they were snowed in. We had a few hard winters in the 80's one after the other, having to hammer an iron bar in the ground to make holes for the electric fence on stubble turnips for the sheep. I had one of those early Diahatsu Fourtracks and used to carry a bale of straw and when the thing would conk out as the diesel had waxed in the tank to pump pipe that ran underneath I could grab a handfull, set it alight under the motor, give it five minutes and start up and go again leaving it still smouldering in the road. Another year I worked at Edgehill near Banbury and for a couple of days I took the shepherds Land rover to get to and from work but it got worse and ended up taking a 4 wheel drive tractor for the next week even having to take to a few fields to get backwards and forwards.
That last lot of "decent " snow courtesy of the Beast from the East had nothing on what happened back then

 

[Mickstup]

In 1947 a pregnant woman from a farm by a hamlet called Anchor, some of you on here will know where that is, about 1300ft up on the shropshire/wales border had to be towed on a sledge behind a crawler to the village of Clun, about 9 miles, where there was a cottage hospital. The crawler, driven by a redoubtable woman, Miss Jane Bennet-Evans, had to follow the line of electric poles down the valley as they had no idea where the road was.

 

[Chopsy Varmint]

Nearly watched it then seen that waste of oxygens name View attachment 924792

If you want to watch it, it's linked here in this post upthread without Packham's presentation:

https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/bbc4-1963-big-freeze.333542/#post-7271601

 

[DeeGee]

I gave a moocall device to someone a few weeks ago as I thought it to be shytte, but asked for a bottle of single malt. The problem is the daft southerners think whisky is whisky. Knowing my luck will end up with a bottle of grouse.

Can I have the Grouse then?

 

[egbert]

I gave a moocall device to someone a few weeks ago as I thought it to be shytte, but asked for a bottle of single malt. The problem is the daft southerners think whisky is whisky. Knowing my luck will end up with a bottle of grouse.

not this'un

 

[Kidds]

1940.
You would struggle to find that many long handled shovels these days never mind anybody that knew how to work one.

 

[uztrac]

In 63 I had to drive a Fowler Challenger 3 with a blade ( no cab) about 1 mile there & 1 mileback to get our post & milk etc from the local pub on the main road. Our road had about 6 ft of snow drifting either side.

 

[Yale]

Now as a memory of my youth in the early 80’s was having an old series 3 Land Rover and due to snow blocking the road we had to go up one of our fields and then through a ditch out onto the road again.

I can remember my father wrestling the steering wheel then having to get out,under the front to chip away the ice which had immediately formed on the front axle swivels preventing the wheels from being steered.

 

[roscoe erf]

Nearly watched it then seen that waste of oxygens name View attachment 924792

Chris Packham says British nature lovers should not get 'upset about the rainforest' while 'persecuting cockroaches and wasps' on our own doorstep
what a dick