With my job and especially the mrs's job (looking after animals at a rescue centre) we've been stranded for 3 days with the recent snow and 5 days at the start of the month.
The snow that came in Jan'10 we were stuck for 5 days and then there was the snow last year in Dec, which was 2 days.
We seem to be in a bad area which is exposed to the elements and combining that with a steep hill didn't look good for the few that gave it a go.
We've had extreme weather now for the past 2 years and a few bad'ish spells before that. I'm just trying to better prepare us for future spells like this. I know it might not happen again for a long time, but IF it does we need to be in a position where we can get out.
I can sometimes work from home (IT), but a lot of the time i need to be onsite. My other half has absolutely got to get in somehow. A friend of ours has kindly been taking her in as he's got a Disco.
Hopefully you'll see a bit better where i'm coming from.
Yes, I do see. I lived on the Weald. If you're on the Downs, then even if it's infrequent, snow is certainly trouble. The skating exhibition I was involved in was on the South Downs, and some colleagues of mine got stuck all night on the North Downs on a separate occasion.
I think, though, that if you're prepared to put the AutoSocks on, and take them off when you get to a gritted road, that could very well do it. The grip they give is simply phenomenal - the only real advantage an SUV could give would be coping with sheer depth of snow, which probably is just the difference between shovelling a driveway and driving over it.
As an example, last year we had 18 inches of snow actually lying here. One house in our road had just been vacated by the previous tenant, whose removal van just made it away before the really heavy dump of snow. The new owners couldn't get moved in because their removal van couldn't make it to pick up their stuff. They were renting a house in a remote hamlet right up in the Pentlands three miles away, up an exposed, single-track road.
They were running up and down between the rented house and their new home, in a very ordinary little car, wearing a pair of AutoSocks. While everyone else was getting stuck just in our road, which isn't very steep, this thing was just laughing it off. Not only that, it was making it right into the hills along that single-track road which must have been affected by drifting.
I'm pretty sure that if you had a set of winter tyres on the GTi, you'd be completely fine, no problem. I just think that if the snowfall is infrequent, you might find the AutoSocks are your answer. They're a lot more hassle than just changing the tyres and forgetting about it all till spring, but if the snow only hits occasionally for a few days, the hassle isn't so bad. And the grip even out-does winter tyres.
Rolfe.
