That tabloid has been wailing about an imminent 800 mile ‘snow bomb’ for more than three weeks: “Brits to be hit by Arctic blast”, “exact date when winter will arrive”.  Clickbait pontifications that the UK Met Office attempt to counter by reasoning that it’s near impossible to accurately predict snowfall even seventy-two hours in advance.  The accompanying stock-sourced photos are of the general genre ‘snorting red stag with snowflake-speckled coat – Richmond Park’.  Depictions and headlines easily condensed to a précis of ‘potential snowflake spotting event in central London’.  

Or so my cynical mind surmises.  

We’re off to a housesitting gig; one flat, two cats, no garden.  Christmas in Madrid, and trying to maintain to a land/sea travelling itinerary.  Which entails planning a route that tries to marry trains and a ferry, accommodation and cycle reservations.  Interesting logistics that comes with one non-negotiable caveat: “not via London”.  

We’ve oft considered the ferries that sail out of the channel ports to the north coast of Spain as an option for heading into southern Europe.  The ‘Ride home from Malaga’, that ended prematurely with the pandemic curtailment had been a possibility.  Again on a subsequent trip, the “Covid completion tour”, the Spanish ferry ports were eclipsed by the promise of 1400 km of French cycle paths north along the Atlantic coast.  

So at the third attempt it seemed pertinent to start by booking the ferry from Portsmouth to Santander, then to work the logistics backwards.  Type in ‘travel to ferry port from the north’ to any search and inevitably the result ‘through London’ comes up.  Which would be perfectly doable if it was a case of alighting from one train, crossing the platform and climbing aboard another.  But of course that’s not possible.  You can’t even just cross the station, you have to cross the city – in the dark, at rush hour with loaded bikes, enhanced by the predicted prospect of a snowflake-spotting opportunity.  It’s not the only impediment to routing through the UK’s capital.  Whilst it’s possible to throu’ ticket a passenger, all the railway companies’ booking apps have a blind spot when it comes to a cycle reservation.  The possible explanation might be, although never indicated: no spaces remaining, bus replacement service in operation, or – and here you need to do some deep rabbit hole researching – the algorithms cannot conceive that a cyclist could ride between two adjoining stations.  

In frustration The Navigator turns the question around.  Where do the trains go to from Portsmouth?  To London of course but also to Cardiff.  Haddington, Edinburgh, Cardiff, so neatly avoiding the southeast.  With the added possibility of a morning wandering in the Welsh capital’s city centre.  We have the makings of plan.  

A plan that hasn’t taken account of that one imponderable.  The Snow Bomb has acquired some authentication with the met officials declaring several yellow weather warnings.  Amoeba blobs that shapeshift, coalesce and divide, floating uncertainty around on a map, the unpredictability a weather forecaster’s fingered rejoinder to the tabloid press.  To wake on the morning of our intended day of travel, with all those tickets in their timed slots, to a foot of snow outside the window now seems a possibility.  

At times we will look at each other and wonder if we’re over-thinking the potential problems, creating an alphabet of alternate plan Bs, contingency plan Cs, all facilitated by being time-rich pensioners.  It’s going to take from Tuesday midday to Saturday morning just to get to the northern Iberian coast.  I suppose flying might have been quicker.  It would without a doubt have been cheaper.

Day of departure, cloudless sky, frosty, but dry; no snow bomb, just a ping.  Yet another warning; this time it’s orange.  Seems that Met Eireann is feeling neglected, and the Irish weather service have declared a ‘named’ storm. ‘Bert’ is gathering his energies out in the Atlantic and we’re going to be sailing across the Bay of Biscay.