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| The Blizzard |
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Many will tell of the Winter of 1962-63, one of the coldest, snowiest and longest of them all!
Shapwick's southerly climate was no protection at all and it suffered along with most of the Country. As I recall, the first flakes of snow fell on Boxing Day, and did not let up for that night, or the next day or the next night. That gave us quite a dollop of snow. And then the Blizzard struck. So much snow that the drifts filled the lanes from hedgetop to hedgetop. Opening the door between the outside passageway of our house revealed a wall of snow as high as the door. And then, around New Year, the frosts set in. Night after night after night. Forming a thick crust of solid frozen snow that you had to jump really hard to crack through. Later, from the sky came snow pellets, little round bits of snow, somewhere between sleet and hailstones. And that stuck to the crust. It was, of course, a white paradise for the village children. Snowballs and snowmen were popular whilst the snow was still fresh, but impossible after the first frosts; skating on the frozen flooded area in the corner of Conker field (no skates of course, but wellies were very versatile!) - run like hell across the snowy field down the slope towards the ice and see how far you could slide. The only traffic were the odd tractor that could manage to get about on parts of the lanes. Most stock was indoors thankfully, and food was nearby in hayricks and barns. Water was a bit of a problem however. I do not think us kids really understood the hardship that the farmers were undergoing - to us it was great fun. Because the village was cut off, the school bus could not visit. So, no school - I swear we missed a whole term but think now it must have been a half term, still, quite a few weeks off school! After a week or two, someone send a crawler tractor - a bulldozer - with a big metal blade up front, to carve through the drifts on the Badbury road. Dismay, dismay... But wait, although the drifts had been swept aside, the blade had left a shiny frozen surface as clear as glass and as slippery as ice - it was ice! Great, now nothing, even a tractor, could travel that road. And so the school bus stayed away! Badbury Rings after snowfall is an ideal place for sledging. Three ramparts in succession, gave the chance to sledge from the top one, down into the dip, up and over the middle one, down again and up over the lower bank, and away across the sloping downland. Could we do it? well, we tried all kinds of sledge (all homemade of course) but doing all three proved impossible. One day, we were joined by a local well-off family who had little Johnny perched atop a splendidly varnished super-sledge that must a cost a bob or two. And it did go well too, not enough to do the three banks though. We had brought along a bit of old corrugated-iron sheet, with one end curled up a bit. Our earlier efforts had finally disintegrated after punishing runs (bear in mind also that the sledges were hauled up from the village and back again - a round trip of two and a half miles). The bit of tin was all we could find... Still, we took the sheet to the top rampart and joined the nobs who looked somewhat down their noses at our "sledge" (and at us too!). Little Johnny set off on his Rolls and did quite well. Now it was our turn. Two aboard and one shoving from behind - and off we went. Down and up, down and up, down and away. away across the downs. Yes! The moral? A bit of old tin beats the best money can buy! Has that feat been equalled since? Igloos were constructed, not from nice blocks of snow, but of flatter chunks of frozen ice and snow, and these lasted long into the eventual thaw that arrived in February. I know we old 'uns always say the winters were worst in the olden days, but has there been one like that since?
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