M6

For reasons that we don't need to go into, this weekend has involved driving from the south of England to the north, and then back again.

The weather forecast wasn't good, but I worked out that if I took the more westerly route on the way up I would avoid the worst of the weather, and that worked out OK. Coming back I thought the same strategy would be best ,but that may have been a mistake. In retrospect, it sounds as though the route down the east of the Pennines might have been a bit easier today.

When we set off from Northumberland this morning the mix of sunshine and snow made for some glorious views, but from Carlisle we were racing bad weather on the way down. Somewhere between Penrith and Lancaster the snow caught up with us, and that made for a difficult journey down the M6 through the south of Cumbria and the north of Lancashire.

In the end, we arrived home safely, and things could have been a lot worse. The most sensible thing might have been not to travel at all, but that would have caused other problems. In practice, when things were difficult, everyone on the road was being very sensible, and like our fellow travellers, we just took things slowly through the difficult sections until the weather improved, and the road cleared.

It was certainly an experience, but not one that I'm keen to repeat any time soon.