Our car (foreground) in its new location.

Our car has not moved from where it was abandoned parked on Friday – halfway down our road, pointing uphill.

Actually that is only half-true.  The truth is even worse, and a little more embarrassing.  I did move it on Saturday morning.  I got it far enough uphill to turn around, then I went off to the shops.  When I came back it got stuck just a bit further up from where it had been parked and could get no further: all I could do was let it roll/slide back to exactly where I started.Saturday night we had a party to go to, and thought it might be worth trying again but the thing would not even budge an inch – just a lot of wheel-spinning on the ice.  So we just went back home. Our neighbour reckons it is because of the way the treads go on our tyres, but there is no way I am going to go and swap them round in this weather.

Today there was a lot of activity in the road.  Some blokes from right at the top had come down with shovels and hacked away the worst of the ice in the road at the bottom so they could get their cars and vans up to the top, and others had been spreading grit.  I thought it might be worth trying to move my car after all that so I went back down hill, spent ten minutes scraping the windows, and then had exactly the same result as before.  I reckon we could make it up the hill OK if only we could get the car out of its parking space: all that grit and shovel work was only in the middle of the road and not right in front of our wheels.

Earlier on I had taken a walk to the shops and see that there are still a lot of people in the roads off Tollgate Hill leaving their cars at the bottom of both ends of Hollingbourne Crescent just to be sure.  It makes some sense, although it also makes the entrances to Hollingbourne a little more hazardous than they would otherwise be.

I didn’t go as far as Hobbs Road (Crawley’s steepest road – my arse!).  I imagine it is bad, but no worse than Hollingbourne Crescent, Hammond Road, Ranmore Close or Wye Close.  The county council boasts that it has loads of grit – enough to last the winter – so it is frustrating they can’t spare any for those few roads that really need it.   It is fortunate that nobody up here needed an ambulance or fire engine over the weekend!

Anyway…  a few photos from my walk:

The northern entrance to Hollingbourne Crescent

The southern entrance to Hollingbourne Crescent

A closer look at the south end of Hollingbourne Crescent

I’ll be taking the bus to work tomorrow…   What is even more frustrating is that Chrystal’s little Daewoo seems to have to trouble getting up the hill.  Must have the right kind of tyres or something.