The short version of the story is that coming home from a spectacularly lovely family Christmas in Burghwallis, I foolishly took my usual route home over the Pennines on the A66. As I drove west the weather worsened until I was puttering along very slowly in a minor blizzard. I crested a hill into a stretch of road that hadn't been gritted, to find a number of cars (10 or so I think) strewn over the road at various angles. Turns out a Mondeo had collided with a jeep sending the jeep into the back of a police car (!) and then four more cars had crashed further up the slope trying to avoid the first accident. As I crested the hill two more cars had collided attempting to avoid the second accident. I tried to stop and couldn't, sliding downhill into the back of one car before being hit side on by another which also couldn't stop. Not fun.
Amazingly nobody seemed to have been hurt in all this car-carnage, at least two other cars (as well as my own) were rendered undrivable and had to be towed away. Two hours later as the truck carrying me and Bags left the scene traffic in both directions had ground to a halt, several more minor shunts had happened (some from stopped cars slipping down the hill into other stopped cars!) and the Police were closing the road to all through traffic with snow barriers.
Not a happy end to an otherwise wonderful family Christmas, but I'm all in one piece and it could have been much much worse. Fingers crossed that poor old Bags isn't a total write-off.
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