An Awfully Big Adventure

So this week as I sit down to write my blog, I don't have a problem as to subject matter. You'll soon see why.

The week had promised to be a little boring. My job for Wednesday and Thursday of this week had been cancelled at the end of last week and Sunday afternoon saw me driving down to Gatwick to jet off to Amsterdam two days to work as a speaker coach on a conference for Astra Zeneca, courtesy of my lovely honorary goddaughter Maddy Williams.

To be perfectly honest there wasn't really a job there. Many senior people often don't want to be told anything about presenting and certainly not in front of their colleagues. I can understand this, so apart from providing a little useful advice as to how to deal with the stage that was laid out as a catwalk, I divided the time between wandering round a very cold Amsterdam–so cold I ended up buying a coat in H&M as in a moment of rashness I'd thought that a suit, two T-shirts a shirt, cardigan and a large pashmina shawl would have sufficed, - and catching up on daytime TV on the hotel television, and on my computer.

Job done I headed towards the airport at around four o'clock on Tuesday afternoon absolutely convinced that of course there would be flight delays. The combination of snow and British Airways didn't bode well. I was wrong. Apart from a rather tense 10 min in the air when the pilot told us that Gatwick airport had closed and we might have to reroute, we landed at Gatwick at just after 6:10. By 6:30 PM I was in the long stay car park picking up our gorgeous electric blue Citroen, Guy, and setting off for home.

As I turned onto the M23 the snow was coming down hard. Looking through the windscreen ahead of me it seemed like the special effects from I movie, a moving mass of large swirling white flakes, but the traffic was moving at a steady 40 miles an hour and I thought it's just going to take a little longer than usual to get home. How right I was.

At the point where the M25 turns off, the M23 heads into Croydon. Here the traffic ground to a halt. I sat listening to the radio for a while and then noticed we were not moving at all even in small stages. However coming back down the hard shoulder were some cars that had given up the ghost further up the road and were now choosing to head onto the M25. After half an hour sitting there I decided that this too might be a good gamble. I found a break in the traffic on the nearside lane cut over the grass verge and headed onto the M25 turning east where I knew the next junction was only 2 miles away.

I reached Junction six on the M25 just after seven o'clock. Halfway down the slip road the traffic ground to a halt. I sat listening to “The Archers". The tales of Ambridge finished and we moved on into the next programme. I decided to ring Rich and let him know what I was up to. I said t"I have been sitting in about 20 min and it looks like it's going to take some time to get home". He was having his own problems trying to work out which trains were going to run from Charing Cross and we agreed to speak later .

Every 5 min or so we would inch forward a little bit, 5 yards, 10 yards. Eventually after just over an hour I got to the roundabout. The traffic was absolutely blocked in and my bladder decided it had had enough. Leaving the car running, I slipped out of the door and have spent a very welcome 90 seconds in the nearby bushes.

I returned to the car and checking the details on the tom-tom sat nav and my watch, it told me it had now been 90 min and we travelled 2/10 of a mile. Suddenly there was a spurt of movement and I edged my way up onto the bottom of the A22. There we ground to a halt again. This time we didn't move for at least 25 min. By now it was 8:45 and I was beginning to think that I wasn't actually going to get home. I checked the hotel app on my iPhone to see if there was a hotel nearby. Indeed there was, 1 mile in the opposite direction! I rang them to see if they had any rooms, and my biblical status was confirmed as I was told there was no room at the inn or indeed at the other hotel in the village. I was a little too frustrated and worried at this time to ask if they'd got any stables.

I rang Rich again to see where he got up to and found that he managed to get to the bus stop at the bottom of the hill at home. I rang mum to tell her what was going on and of course to make it sound like there was no problem at all so that she wouldn't worry.

I'd now been semi-stationary for nearly 2 1/2 hours and we travelled about 500 yards. Even with traffic travelling along it on the other lane of the road was now covered with snow.

Suddenly for no reason whatsoever, we began to move forward and we continue to move. The speedometer crept up from 3 miles an hour to 5 miles an hour to 8 miles an hour to at one-point, a breathtaking 11 miles an hour. The turnoff to Caterham appeared on the left-hand side and posed an immediate dilemma. Should I do, as indeed lots of other people seem to be doing, a quick turn to the left and try and park up in Caterham and hope there was a train heading up the line home. Or should I continue on?

I think at this stage I just wanted to keep moving and the thought of having to spend some time waiting on a cold train platform was more than I could bear. Guy and I ploughed steadily onwards. This bit became really spooky. We were now on the Caterham bypass, but every other car seemed to have turned off behind us. There was also absolutely nothing coming forward along the other lane. The cause of this was soon revealed as I turned round a corner to find two lorries jackknifed blocking the other side of the dual carriageway. I trudged on. At best we managed eight or 9 miles an hour, but at least we were moving. All along the other carriageway people were just sat in their cars at a standstill as I had been, not knowing that up ahead of them was a total blockage. At some points when we came to a halt, I wound the window down and was asked by drivers on the other carriageway what was going on. I told them that the best thing to do was probably turn round and try and find another route. I didn't see anybody doing that.

It's now about 10 PM and after 3 1/2 hours in the car were just coming to the old Croydon aerodrome. This is a drive that normally takes about 20 min. Here too everything seems to have become a little ethereal. The opposite side of the road is full of huge pantechnicons and juggernauts, all with their lights off, using half the A23 as a car park. At the bottom of the hill are some police Land Rover's, lights flashing, parked across the road and stopping anybody moving any further out of town. Behind this of course is another huge traffic jam, blessedly again on the other side of the road.

Guy and I soldier on through a windswept snow-covered deserted Croydon, and we are soon in familiar homeward bound territory. Mercifully my little wonder car has held on to the road at every opportunity. There have been a couple of sticky moments when I've applied my foot to the brake pedal and felt the slide of the wheels on the road, but he soldiered on magnificently.

Never has a sign for Penge seemed so welcome.

Now it's nearly 3 hours since my roundabout visit to the toilet and the bladder is pressing hard against the seat. Even Radio Two has decided to join in the torture with the plaintiff cat strangling tones of Mick Hucknall imploring me "I'm holding on, I'm holding on" Then at 11.22pm we pull into a parking space in Halifax Street and head inside the flat. The warmth of welcome is enormous, though temporarily pushed aside for a lengthy stand in the bathroom.

Home..... is where the heart is. Home Sweet home. It's taken me and our trusty little car nearly five hours to do it. A journey of twenty three miles. And here we are. In pyjamas, on the sofa, having a baked potato and ready to watch "I'm a celebrity' In a way this has been my own little bushtucker trial. An awfully big adventure thats taken me through tears, frustration, hope and relief and made me appreciate the feeling of coming home in a way I haven't done for a long long while.

So thanks to Rich for his constant support on the phone, to the people whoever they were who eventually cleared the A22 from whatever was blocking it and to mine own little tough Guy!