The RAC Rally
Toyota Celica GT4 in the snow at Chatsworth
One of the first times my 90 TD saw snow was on a trip into Derbyshire, with my friend Jack and his step son, to watch the Chatsworth stage of the RAC rally (or World Rally Championship GB as it is now). Not long after we got there it started snowing and by the time we were heading off home at 5pm a good few centimeters had settled. The organizers were ushering cars out of the car park (field) onto the House’s access road and out onto the main road, as it was snowy this was a slow process. However, I spotted another Landy taking a more direct route heading across country to the main road… this looked better than sitting in the queue so I followed, loads more fun and save a 45min queue!
Once on the main road the conditions weren’t too bad although the roads were starting to white over. On entering Hathersage heading back to Sheffield I decided to go over the top of Stannage edge via the Lane out of the village rather than the main road. As we went higher and higher towards Stannage the road got whiter and whiter, the steering became lighter and lighter but no drama from the 90, we made it to the top. Over the top at the start of the decent a guy flagged us down asking if we could tow a car back onto the road that had skidded off and also the road was impassable. Not wanting to get stuck my self I decided that I would walk down to check out the problem. On stepping out of the Landy I had a surprise, I had to make a quick grab for the door again to keep my self up right, the road was like a sheet of glass.. I was now very impressed the Landy hand made it up the hill. We walked down to the stranded car and decided a tow wasn’t necessary, there were enough bodies about to push the car back onto the road…this worked…about 5 or 6 of us simply pushed the car sideways back onto the road, it was VERY slippy. As soon we got going and got down the other side of the hill into Sheffield all the snow cleared up :-(
