Nightmare Drives

Ever had one of those trips where you just wanted to get there?

Autumn 1994 - Lost in Birmingham

My first proper nightmare drive was whilst spending two days in Birmingham on a training course. After arriving at the training centre on the Wednesday, we spent the entire day at the course, before being given very sketchy directions on how to find the hotel. I had to take a leak before we all set off, and by the time I got to the carpark, everybody else had gone. Worse, I hadn’t bothered to take down many directions, so I was already off to a bad start. I knew that I had to turn right from the office carpark, join the main road at a roundabout (going left), then take the fourth exit on the third roundabout. Or was it the third exit on the fourth roundabout?

To this day, I do not know, quite, where I went wrong. The M6 was extremely busy, so I avoided that, which was a good thing, and when I finally arrived at the hotel, it was rather late, and I had missed the evening meal. In my youthful eagerness not to feel left out, I implied that I had done a spot of window shopping. But I will never forget the feeling of being lost in a strange city. Not just a little bit lost, but utterly, utterly, mind numbingly lost. What should have been a twenty minute drive took me two very long and frustrating hours.

Spring 1997 - The Day The M1 Was Shut

Shortly after I acquired the Cinquecento, I drove across to Stoke-on-Trent for an interview. I had prepared myself for the trip: I was up about four o’clock in the morning, I had bought along some lunch and a big flask of tea. I left home about five, and by six o’clock I was getting close to Nottingham. It was then I heard that the IRA shut down the M1 (it was during the election campaign). Unfortunately, my route took me across the M1. I contemplated this when, at six thirty, I ground to a halt in Nottingham city centre. In an hour, I travelled almost a mile. This was one impressive hold up, after Nottingham on the A52 as it approached the M1. Still, I had a cuppa tea, and another, and enjoyed my breakfast. I couldn’t go forwards, I couldn’t turn back, I couldn’t find a diversion, and I had nowhere to stop and stretch my legs.

It was raining, and in two hours, I covered four more miles, not getting out of first or second gear. By now, I needed to stop and pee. Badly. The Cinquecento’s coolant temperature didn’t drop below 95 degrees, nor did it go above 100 degrees, and the fan was running more often than not. And I needed to stop and pee.

When I eventually arrived in Stoke-on-Trent, I was very hungry, tired, and not in the best state of mind for my interview. I was also finding it difficult to walk, having held on to my pee for so long.

But I did get the job . . .

February 1999 - Iced Cinq

Although technically not a driving tale, it was a nightmare at the time. My housemates and I had decided to go our one Saturday night, and I elected to drive. However, once in Hanley, the lure of gin and tonic proved to be too much for me. So we decided to get a taxi back.

It was a good night, and we spent our last bit of cash on the taxi back. So far, so good.

The next morning I arranged for a lift to Hanley and was dropped off around a half mile from the car park. After a short walk, I returned to the carpark: which was now a Sunday market!

My Cinquecento was part of a market stall! Fortunately, the stall keeper had wrapped the Cinq in cardboard, and built the metal frame around it!

I had no choice but to leave the car. Unfortunately, I had no money to get a taxi back and my mobile was out of battery power. I had to walk home!

It was only 7¼ miles, just about an hour or so, but long enough to be feeling tired when I arrived home.

Later that night, about six o’clock, I had to persuade my housemate to give me a lift. This he did, under duress, but when he saw the Cinq, wrapped in cardboard, in a metal frame garage, he nearly crashed through laughter!

It was a cold day, and the Cinquecento was frozen. Unfortunately, so was the drivers’ side door lock. I couldn’t unlock the door. Even after warming the key up, I could not activate the lock. I got in through the passenger door, reached over to start it, then manually unlocked the door. As the engine started warming up, I began to peel off the cardboard. Most of it was frozen in place.

It must have been a strange sight; me, first trying to get in to the car, then unwrapping it, then finally trying to open the drivers’ door (with frozen seals!).

3 January 1999 - A Headwind

After taking a planned fortnight break from work, I loaded up the car to head back to Stoke-on-Trent. We’d had a windy few days, and it was coming from the west, but the forecast was for it to improve so I delayed my trip. It started to rain, with sleet in the west: things were getting worse. I waited until it was properly dark - driving at dusk is rather tiring anyway. I set off about four thirty, and on a good run, could make the trip in about three and a half hours.

The wind was strong. The weather forecast had said gusts of up to 80 mph, and with a headwind, all of my luggage and me, the Cinquecento was struggling. As I left Grantham, it started to rain, at first it was reasonably light but it got heavier. The route I preferred took me towards Birmingham on the A454 (?), and I joined the A50 at the M1 junction. I remember climbing the hill after the last roundabout in Nottingham, leaving the 40 limit in fourth, reaching the usual 55 on the way up, then changing up at the summit, only for the speed to bleed off on the way down thanks to the tremendous headwind.

On the A50, the poor little Cinquecento really struggled to maintain 55 let alone 70, so I gave up trying and accepted the slower speed. Then it began to snow. Now, I’ve yet to see snow as bad as it was that night, but it wasn’t long before the lights were so clogged up with snow that I had to stop, and stop again, and generally stop every fifteen minutes or so. Speed was down to about 15 mph, maybe 20, because the roads had not been treated.

I eventually arrived about one o’clock in the morning, to get up later that day at about six, to begin the defrosting process on the Cinquecento once more.

November 1997 - An Unusual One

Lincolnshire is notable for being flat, rural, and generally dull. Because it’s so flat, when we get fog, it usually hangs around for some considerable time. When it’s cold enough, we get freezing fog, which does lots of cool things like forms ice on leading edges.

At the time, I was commuting to and from Lincolnshire at weekends, principally to benefit from my mother’s superior cooking, and to see my girlfriend, in the Cinq. The trip usually took about four hours on a Friday night, leaving Stoke at five thirty and arriving back at nine thirty. It had been misty in Stoke all week - not too dense, but thick enough so that you had to use your dipped headlights to be seen. It was also patchy. Not too bad, all up.

When I reached the outskirts of Lincolnshire, the temperature dropped, and the fog thickened a little, but not too much. I could see the ice building on the wiper blades and on the wing mirrors: freezing fog. Speed was at 45 mph or so, given the conditions. As I came into Grantham, down the hill, under the bridge, I could see that most parked cars had a heavy frost on them. My speed was reducing. Leaving Grantham, towards Sleaford, I noticed that the engine was running slightly warm.

Now to explain, the Cinquecento usually maintained a coolant temperature of between 70 and 80 degrees, unless in traffic, but she was up to 90 degrees. At first, I put this down to being held up in Grantham for a bit, but watched it. The temperature continued to climb, and the fan kicked in at the usual one hundred degrees.

Now when the cooling fan kicks in on the Cinquecento 900, you feel it. In traffic, the car shakes a little as the inertia is taken up by the suspension, on the open road, there is a drop in power (not unlike an air conditioning compressor kicking in). If you hadn’t been watching the coolant temperature, you ought to feel the fan start up.

This set off alarm bells. The cooling system on the Cinquecento might be a bit volatile, but it should not require the fan to kick in whilst driving forward at 35 in very cold air. Did we have a coolant leak or, worse, no coolant? Unlikely, since the temperature was holding on to about a hundred degrees. The needle wasn’t descending, nor was it rising. I whacked the heater up to full and put the fan on to a higher setting: I knew I still had coolant because the heater was still working.

I stopped at the next lay-by, left the engine running, grabbed my torch, and popped open the bonnet. Peering under the bonnet of the Cinq, I noted that there appeared to be nothing wrong. Plenty of coolant left, sure she was hot, but she wasn’t steaming. The fan was running - but I couldn’t feel the effects on my trousers . . .

That was it! The Cinquecento’s radiator is set off to one side of the front of the car, with a ventilation grill set into the bumper. These were iced over! Now hacking the ice off wasn’t all that easy, but once most of the airways had been cleared, I drove off, and the temperature rapidly dropped back down to normal.

October 2000 - To London

I’d bought the Mondeo TD to be a long distance cruiser, and she certainly lived up to this. One Sunday, my wife and I drove down to London to collect some American friends who had flown in to Heathrow. We drove back, dropped them off, then I had half an hour for a cuppa tea and to load the car, because I was off to Golders Green, London for a course. I left about nine o’clock on a Sunday evening, stopped at a Sainsbury for some diesel (and grateful that they were still open) before cruising south.

On the M11, it started to rain. It got heavier: very heavy, wipers-on-full, down to third gear heavy, with the road surface flooded with at least an inch of rain. A few idiots went screaming past at 70 odd, leaving a huge cloud of spray that further reduced visibility. Unfortunately, one stupid individual who had gone past me at some speed, slid his ABS-equipped Cavalier into the back of a HGV, and another idiot went into the side of the spinning car. I was stuck in about a half mile of queuing traffic; by the time I arrived at the scene, emergency services were there and looked to have helped two shaken (but unhurt) drivers out of the wreckage.

The M25 was also very wet, and I finally arrived at my hotel close to midnight, parked up, checked in, then collapsed on the bed after driving almost 500 miles that day.

June 2001 - York to Norwich Commute

After starting a new job in York, I left Norwich around four thirty on the Monday morning to drive to the office, then left work at four thirty on the Friday to drive home. It’s a 200 mile trip (thankfully including the B1225 covered in the Favourite Roads section). After my first week I left the office at four thirty, to get stuck in York’s traffic on a hot Friday evening. Selby, to the south of the city, was also very busy, and it took me an hour and a half to reach the M62 (usual time of about fifty minutes).

The M62, M18 and M180 were free flowing, the B1225 was entertaining, yes even in a diesel Mondeo, and everything was going peachy until I joined the A47, which was at a 40 mph crawl. I can cope with traffic at 40, but clearly the idiot behind me could not. Now again, that’s fair enough, except that the A47 is single carriageway and traffic coming the other way is also very heavy and at a similar speed. Again, fair enough if the guy behind is tailgating me in a sports car, but he’s not. He’s in a laden HGV, the big ones. I know he’s laden because he cannot accelerate very well at roundabouts.

This is concerning because I know that laden HGVs cannot stop as well as lightly laden Mondeo TDs.

After several horn-blasting sessions at me, because I was slowing down since I see him as a big threat, I pull off at the first bit of dual carriageway. The HGV driver follows me into the lay-by. I moved off, left the A47, and he didn’t follow. I rejoined after a two minute breather, and eventually caught up with the idiot.

Sadly, the HGV didn’t have a rear licence plate on the end of the trailer, but he did have one on his cab. Unfortunately, as I slid past, the driver saw what I was doing and attempted to run me into the central barrier of the dual carriageway.

That’s scary. That’s very scary.

A downchange and a bit of turboboost saw the chuff behind me, and a bit of mirror reading saw his number taken down. I then left the dual carriageway to be followed by the ruffian. After he said a few choice words to me, most of which I took down as evidence, he wished me on my way /cough/ and that was the end of that.

Or so he thought.

Lets just say, heh, he’s no longer a HGV driver for the same company.

This incident is a one-off example, because I have to say, most HGV drivers are excellent at their job. They have to be.

December 1999 - Wiper Blade Fun

Just before Christmas, my fiancée was landing at Heathrow Airport and I had promised, no, guaranteed that I would be there on time. I had allowed five hours for the drive, which you can do in three and a half on a good run, and with hindsight, this was a good thing.

The problems started first thing: when I woke up, there being two inches of snow on the ground. After getting dressed, I went out to the Mondeo to discover that under the snow was a layer of ice. After she thawed enough to allow me to drive off, the roads were somewhat nasty. Fortunately, I knew I had plenty of time, so there was no rush. It had also started to sleet, which was a good thing because I figured the snow would all be gone by the time I arrived home that night.

After perhaps an hour of driving, I became aware that the drivers’ side wiper blade did not appear to be clearing as much screen as usual. Since it was due for replacement, I didn’t think that much of it, until I was on the M25 at an indicated 60 mph in the middle lane, using the wiper to clear the rain and spray, and the wiper blade assembly started to disintegrate.

Now I can assure you that when this happens, your first thought is to stop using the wipers, because with each sweep, the gubbins that holds the wiper blade into the arm is getting looser and looser. But you need the wipers to be able to see.

At this point, I’m looking at a noose of rope hanging from one of the many bridges on the M25.

I pull back from the HGV I’m approaching, move over into the left hand lane, and then on to the hard shoulder. In just a few seconds, I was drenched from the spray of passing HGVs and cars. When I inspected the wiper assembly gubbins, the brittle plastic came apart in my hand, leaving the blade to rattle around in the arm “u” shape. Not good news. Fortunately, with the careful application of a couple of paperclips and some old tissue paper, I was able to secure the blade back into the holder.

No nerd should ever leave home without a supply of paperclips and tissue paper.

After picking my fiancée up from the airport, and driving home, to make matters worse I missed the A11 turning on the A14. By the time I had realised that I’d missed it, we were some thirty miles west of the turning. We double backed on ourselves, only for me to miss it a second time. Third time lucky, but we covered an additional fifty miles on the return trip because of my stupidity.