Dec 12th, 2014

Author: donich_admin

Woes yesterday, snow today

We woke up this morning to see that the first real snow of the year had fallen overnight – we probably only have about 2cm here at ‘Loch level’ but the hills are very white.

Yesterday was one of those days where everything seemed to go awry. First we lost our ADSL connection because the BT Exchange was damaged by lightning. Then because Vodafone use the BT lines for their connectivity we had no mobile coverage either. And of course because we use both our existing lines for the ADSL we don’t have a normal landline – so all we had was Skype. We failed our Internet connectivity over to the satellite and that worked fine for ordinary browsing, and luckily we were both on reporting days rather than actively testing.

During the course of the morning the storm receded and returned several times, and every time it got close overhead, we had to power all our systems down again because we couldn’t run the risk that the satellite would get fried and we would lose that too.

I said to R that these problems were a feature of living out in the sticks, but he asked the good question of how different it would be if we were living in a town – and I suppose not really that different at all.

So by lunchtime the ADSL was back and with it our mobiles – but then we had another issue. We were supposed to have been going into Glasgow for a Christmas party, leaving after work. About 4pm I looked at the (really useful) live traffic camera at the top of the Rest and be Thankful, and the A83 was already white with snow. With the main road affected already, no chance of gritters on the Glen Mhor road (the single track to Lochgoilhead) we didn’t consider our chances of getting back from Glasgow at 11pm very good. So we didn’t go which was a shame. And that is a disadvantage of living out here.

But today we saw the advantage again. It was a lovely crisp morning and R and I went for an early walk through the village which looked like a picture postcard under its covering of snow. As we came back, the sun was just turning the mountains pink, and they reminded me of the time we stayed in Darjeeling and saw the sunrise over the Himalayas. Well not quite perhaps – but they were a bit like that.