Prepping: the new world...

suzeesu2000

Great advice DigForVictory, from someone who did get stuck on a very cold, dark, snowy evening yes, feet do suffer!  

Floss

If one drives a Landy / Range Rover / posh 4wd but does not know how to tow (the drivers version of "too posh to push"?), ones dealership should be able to demonstrate. 

annieb64

A lot of the posh cars around here don't seem to know how to reverse.It's interesting when they meet the bus on a narrow country lane.

fionaandphil

Our little country lane has become a cut through and there are a surprising number of cars who don't know how to reverse,  It does make me laugh that they frequently drive up the middle of the road and don't seem to know what to do when there is a car coming towards them, not long before one ends up in a ditch or a hedge I suspect.

DigForVictory

When I drove Welsh country lanes (car and a half wide, 6' high hedges, intermittent bits of verge, stiff hills) the locals would wind the windows down & play whatever loud, so you could track a car along a valley just by listening. (Towing a trailer of stock, they were easier to spot as the trailer was taller than the hedging, and the anxious bleating helped.)
The hill down from the nearest village was swine & yet the rules were really simple - you met someone coming up, you reverse, as only you can see where you're going. (In the deep cold, you went the long way.) Reversing up ice wasn't a sport anyone intended to play, and the pub at the bottom had to rebuild its wall some years when someone thought their car could make it up & was wrong. Penalty for realising early you had overestimated matters much lower than having gone at it flooring it and making it almost to the first bend...

In Lancashire we still have the steep hills and seems almost as much water, but that motorway blockage had a knock-on hassle. The easy alternate route had also flooded so there were bottlenecks around fire engines desperately pumping areas clear to vent the water a quarter of a mile along.

I may ask Middleson if I can borrow one of his inflatable kayaks. (For the Teams photo that says "I tried" even if it's carefully staged on the neighbour-two-doors down's drive - we can swap lifejackets & helmets & they can add a snap to their "terrify the distant offspring" album! Just the derigging of an inflated kayak is not a quick process, so I may try for helmet jacket & paddle selfie. )
 

MayDogsandCoffee

I think the common rule is to give way to those coming up the hill, maybe from the times a car would stall if going too slow.  I often drive country lanes, I used to have a Fiat Panda, the number 'posh cars' that expected me to shift was crazy, I will hold my ground until they have also put some effort in - not going into a ditch because they don't want to get their tyres dirty.  

Floss

Giving way to the vehicle going up the hill was in the Highway Code when I took my test in 1989, andcI always don't (often to the consternation of others!).

joedenise

No-one where we live gives way to cars coming up the hill - they all seem to think it's their right to come down the hill first!  There are only a couple of places where it is safe/wide enough to stop!  I find it really annoying.  I sometimes wonder if anyone has read the Highway Code these days!

DigForVictory

Dad was clear, the car up the hill reverses As They Can See Where They Are Going - reversing downhill, you just point your back end and hope. A recipe for avoidable tragedy, frankly.

thriftwizard

Last time I looked after DS1's menagerie in rural SW Wales, I went to a neighbouring farm to pick up some eggs (£1.50 for 15 pullet eggs) and was mystified when a lady trying to turn into the farm gate just sat in the (enormous, very new) car waving furiously at me to go away - there was no backwards, there was a very solid metal gate there so I could only go forwards to let her in (our car is long, though not unduly bulky) but she'd have to reverse a couple of feet to allow that. It was only when she & her husband got out & swapped places & he reversed it that I realised she couldn't reverse... I don't know how she'd have got out of the gate again, I'd taken one look & decided to reverse in or I'd be reversing out blind onto a very narrow lane with large tractors haring up & down. But the eggs were very good!