Tuesday 6 March 2018

And we thought this was a one-off "snow event"

This is an extract from a book I found at a car boot sale in 2012.  I thought I would share this passage with you before this recent snowiness is totally forgotten:



In fine weather its beauty has an oppressive quality; in winter, as the Reverend Donald Carr found out back in 1865, it can be deadly. Mr Carr was the rector of Woolstaston, north of Church Stretton on the eastern side of the Long Mynd, and was also responsible for the remote outlying village of Ratlinghope on the west side, 4 miles away from Woolstaston. On 29 January 1865 he set out through the snow on horseback to take the afternoon service at Ratlinghope. The fallen snow was deep enough to force Mr Carr's servant to take the horses back home, but the clergyman went on alone, crawling on hands and knees through the drifts, to reach the lonely village on the moors and take a short service in the company of a handful of people. The Journey home was a different matter entirely. Back on the heights, a furious gale had blown up. Mr Carr was at first confident that he was on the right track, but soon realized that he had lost his way, with darkness coming on and the blizzard getting worse all the time. Then he fell down the side of a ravine . . .

"I found myself shooting at a fearful pace down the side of one of the steep ravines which I had imagined lay far away to my right . . . I continued my tremendous glissade head downwards, lying on my back. The pace I was going in this headlong descent must have been very great, yet it seemed to me to occupy a marvellous space of time, long enough for the events of my whole previous life to pass in review before me, as I had often heard that they did in moments of extreme peril."

He survived that fall, but shortly afterwards, now conscious that he was completely lost, had another even worse, this time losing his hat and gloves. He still had his brandy flask, but "could hardly get my hands to my mouth for the masses of ice which had formed upon my whiskers, and which were gradually developed into a long crystal beard, hanging half way to my waist."

Somehow he kept going all through the night, continually falling down and forcing himself up and on again, fighting the overwhelming desire to lie down and drift into sleep. Dawn brought no relief, as a dense fog lay over the Long Mynd. Mr Carr found that he had gone snow blind when he could not tell the front of his watch from the back. Staggering on, he found himself at the top of the Lightspout Valley, and in his weakness tumbled over the upper part of the waterfall - somehow without adding to his injuries. Then he lost his boots:

"They do not seem to have become unlaced, as the laces were firmly knotted, but had burst in the middle, and the whole front of the boot had been stretched out of shape from the strain put upon it whilst laboriously dragging my feet out of deep drifts for so many hours together, which I can only describe as acting upon the boots like a steam-power boot-jack. And so for hours I walked on in my stockings without inconvenience. Even when I trod upon gorse bushes, I did not feel it, as my feet had become as insensible as my hands."

At last the exhausted man, "crowned and bearded with ice like a ghastly emblem of winter", stumbled down the Cardingmill Valley and came upon a group of children, who promptly ran away from the apparition. However, help soon came, and Mr Carr made his way home to Woolstaston and eventually to a complete recovery.

Taken from Philip's Welsh Borders, by Christopher Somerville.

12 comments:

  1. I love his style of writing, very easy to visualise his (mis)adventures on that snowy day. He must have been a man of real determination to survive the ordeal.

    I have made a note to myself: "Always wax upper lip and chin before taking a walk through snow." I'm not bothered about being found like "...a ghastly emblem of winter" but I would hate to miss the target with my hip flask of medicinal brandy!

    What a brilliant car boot find.

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    1. My goodness, I think the man needed a good dose of common sense - imagine setting out knowing how bad the weather was and with darkness not too far off.

      Give the man his due though, he got through, minus all the useful bits of clothing one needs in such conditions - no BOOTS in the end! OMG!! I think the medicinal brandy was perhaps the only thing keeping him going - unless it was that stiff upper lip!!!

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  2. Goodness what a man!
    The Long Mynd is a bit of a lonely place in Summer so it must have been awfully lonely back then in winter and he must have had very good socks!

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    1. We've driven round and about that area, when considering houses in Shropshire, and what we both agreed was the ones we looked at were truly in the back of beyond, and how wild the landscape was. Mind you, that said, I adore Dartmoor and few places are as austere as that in a bleak mid winter.

      I thought he must have had woollen socks on not to get frostbite! They bred 'em tough in those days didn't they?

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  3. This 2017-18 winter had a nasty sting in the tail, but compared to 2010 and 2011 it was nothing.

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    1. You're not kidding Simon. We just had that Siberian wind and that was bad enough. We were very fortunate not to have 10foot snow drifts or worse as they did in so many places. Your Brecon Beacons had a good covering, and the A40 from Brecon to Abergavenny was completely blocked.

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  4. I had a Grandfather who lived in Ratlinghope at the same time that this Rector made his visit - We've spent many happy hours on the Long Myndd and the descent down nowadays can be quite scary - so that must have been a terrible endurance that the gentleman went through to get home xx

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  5. Hi Trudie - you must know the whole area pretty well then so can imagine the dear Rector "in action" so to speak. I truly don't know how he survived. As you say, true endurance.

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  6. This is an area I know well from the years I lived in Wolverhampton (on the Shropshire border side) - we often used to walk here on a Sunday afternoon - have of course never seen it when it was like this!!!

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  7. I thought you'd know it Pat. In sunnier times at any rate! This sounded like HELL to me . . .

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  8. Brilliant post - I've heard the story before (can't remember where though) but it was interesting to read it again. I do enjoy Christopher Somerville books - read his book The January Man a few months or more ago.

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  9. It might have been on here in 2012 RR, as I copied it from a post I did then (obviously in snowy weather). I must look out for The January Man now .. .

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