Messages posted by : AllyG
Sami, I'm sorry to hear you missed booking your direct flight back to Glasgow. I hope you have return tickets on the train to get you from London to Glasgow, because I expect they're quite expensive. Once you get back to your Mum I expect you'll be okay. Mums are great at making everything okay again, even with their grown up kids :D Ally |
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We have diesel engines in our tractors, and what we do to start them in very cold weather is warm the engine up first, with an electric heater/light bulb etc. or failing that something like a hot water bottle (just parking them in the shed and out of the wind makes a big difference). The extra heat will also help the battery. And we also use aerostart spray to help them start, in the air intake manifold (not much though because it's not good for the engine).
And I think our oil supplier automatically puts the additive in our diesel, when we buy it in for our bulk tank. We've certainly never had it freeze anyway. Strangely enough, the tractor isn't much better on our snowy, hilly roads than my Sirion. It's very useful for towing cars stuck on the flat, but not on the hills. A 4X4 seems to be much better. And the ATV's are amazingly good in the snow - they just sort of float on it. Edit - while I'm writing an essay on how to start diesel engines in cold weather - I'd like to add that it's very important to change the engine oil to a thinner, less viscous, winter oil, which will be much easier to pump around, and will help the engine to start. And also, if you're really stuck and you can't put the whole vehicle in the warm, or put a heater under the bonnet, just taking the battery off and warming it up overnight (in the house or somewhere), makes a big difference. Ally |
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Heavens above Eggman! How horrifying :shock: I had no idea that a bunnion operation could result in one needing 6 weeks off work. How awful. Poor you. How did you get the bunnions in the first place? And what are they exactly? Ally |
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Maybe Admin could persuade an autosock manufacturer to donate some samples to J2ski, before the snow disappears from the U.K. and we could all take turns to test them. I wouldn't have minded giving them a test run this last week, they would have helped a bit, I'm sure.
My old mini van used to be very good in the snow. If I couldn't get up the snowy hills in it, then no-one would be able to get up there, unless they had a 4X4. And my new car seems pretty good - a Daihatsu Sirion. The only problem I had with it today, is that I think it has a narrower wheel base than most of the other cars which had been up our road, and I was having to slide about a bit in some of the slush in the middle of the road. But I managed okay. Rear wheel drives are absolutely awful in the snow. I had to push a VW camper van up a hill the other day (it was blocking our road) and the rear was swinging about from side to side something chronic. In fact it was quite difficult to push because of the danger of falling over and then getting run over by it. Or we could ask Top Gear to test the autosocks for us? Ally |
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Thanks PSC, I had a look at this, and spotted a catered chalet in St Anton with Ski World, reduced by £460 to £329, leaving Sunday 17th Jan from Gatwick. This looks pretty good to me. Shame I'm too busy to go! Gadget girl, If you can afford to wait you could try and get one of these last minute offers, as PSC suggests, they can be amazingly good value. As for lessons - you can generally get advanced lessons with ski school - I'm doing slalom and my daughter's doing off piste - but lessons are quite expensive. The ski club of Great Britain also does touring days in the resorts where they have a rep, which are free if you join them (and you can get various discounts as well), and you should be able to get 3 days out with them (the other days will be easy ones for lower intermediates). I quite agree with you about how expensive it becomes when you total everything. Our Feb half-term holiday to Courchevel is going to be about £1100 each once we've paid for the train, transfers, apartment, ski hire, ski pass and lessons, and that's not counting the cost of the food we're going to buy while we're on holiday. But if we were to go in a chalet we'd probably be paying that just for flights and the catered chalet. Ally |
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Thanks DaveD for that link,
I didn't actually go to the other resort, so I don't know if that's where they went, but it could have been. It looks as though it's only got 4 Km of piste - which is tiny! And I couldn't find a snow report for it at all. Bansko seems to have a bit of snow at the moment, most of their pistes are open, but Pamporovo doesn't look too good. I am glad I am heading out to Courchevel (in a month's time) and not Bulgaria! Edit - I've found a piste map for Malyovitsa http://www.snow-forecast.com/resorts/Malyovitsa/pistemap Ally |
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I expect it only flies on Saturday though, Pablo. I had this problem when I was looking for flights from Cardiff to Geneva in October. I had to go to Bristol and even then, there was only one flight per day. I hope Sami finds a way of getting home. He has had a terrible time lately. What a holiday! Ally |
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DaveD,
I was just remembering that when we were there - ? 7 years ago - we had a day with rubbishy snow as well, and one of the ski instructors took his group off on a bus to another resort for the day which did have snow. But I don't know which one it was, or where it was, except that it can't have been very far away, because they were only away for the day. They didn't have a ski bus when we were there either - we had to walk on icy pavements or in the road - I particularly remember this because I fell carrying my daughter's skis and hurt my elbow, but luckily did no further damage to my broken shoulder. Ally |
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