Britain enters new ice age!

Roll up, roll up, read all about it.

Airports Close As UK's Big Freeze Hits Travel 12:09am UK, Wednesday January 06, 2010
David Williams and Jo Couzens, Sky News Online

“Heavy snow and freezing weather conditions are wreaking havoc for travellers across the UK as blizzards force airports to close and bring chaos to the roads.”
“The RAC is advising commuters to consider different ways of getting home, or - if possible - to make alternative arrangements”
“Many rail services in Scotland were disrupted, while there have been delays and cancellations to trains in eastern England.”
“Hundreds of schools nationwide were closed”
“The filming of TV soap Coronation Street grounded to a halt in Manchester, as did that on the Emmerdale set based in Leeds.”
“There have also been reports of shoppers panic buying, with supermarkets seeing increased sales in Wellington boots, take-away food and thermal underwear.”

It does my head in. One flake of snow lands on the ground and the Met office is forecasting the worse winter for 100 years. Even the smallest amount of snow has us reaching for our cameras, yet nothing really compares to the big freeze of 1963. The whole country ground to a halt, people were stranded, snow piled up at our doors and January was the coldest month since 1814. The snow started on 22nd December 1962 and remained until 4th March 1963. from the 26th December most of Britain was covered in snow for the next 67 days.
My point, as most of us old enough to remember will know this long spell of bad weather with a bit of a nip in the air over the Winter of 62/63 rang the death knell for the canals as far as long distance carrying was concerned. In my own area, living next the BCN New Main Line in Tipton, we were used to the canal freezing in winter and the ice boats coming towed by several horses smashing the frozen surface and spoiling the fun for us kids. I remember as a youth we used to take the tyres and inertubes off our bikes and ride them on the ice along the canal. How good is that! I remember nothing moving on the canal for weeks and weeks until the thaw began in March when the ice boat did finally go through. The ice during this period was over a foot thick and one week end a group of us lads took a stroll along the cut. We got on the frozen surface at Dudley Port and walked to Tipton Green Junction, where Caggy Stevens yard is now, the turned right down the 7 locks of the Toll End Communication Canal and onto the Walsall Canal then up Riders Green locks, ‘The Graysey ate’ (The greasey eight-although there were only seven of the original eight) and up to Pudding Green Junction then finally right on the New Main Line and back to Dudley Port. All this was completed without getting off the canal, apart from going round bottom gates at locks.
Another thing I remember was when once the ice boats did finally get through the ice broke up into some very large sheets in places and still several inches thick. A big mate of mine at the time decided he would stand on one of these sheets, so he jumped to the middle of it and yes, it supported him. After messing around for a while he decided to get off his ‘raft’ of ice, but as he stepped towards the edge of it, his weight tipped the ice sheet up and he slipped off the sheet, into the cut and the sheet closed back down over the top of him and he disappeared. I lay on the towpath and plunged my arm into the water and felt round. Luckily I felt his hand under the water and grabbed him and pulled him to the surface. His several layers of now sodden clothing made it impossible to pull him out but between us we held him above the surface at the edge of the canal. Directly opposite us was Dudley Port railway station and a ‘railrod mon’ saw our plight and ran round to help us pull him out. The best about it was that this lad told hid father, a hard faced Black Country collier, that I’d pushed him in and he caught hold of me in the street and give me a right ear bending.
At the end of ‘the great freeze’ Most traffic on the main canal network had all but gone with just a few contracts managing to last out until 1968-70, but on the BCN things carried on almost as normal with all the short haul traffic remaining for another decade at least, including all the coal traffics.