Stormageddon

It turns out mostly we got away with it.

Nothing like as stormy here as across most of the South of England, I gather some trees are down across some parts of Cambridge but the worst damage I saw was a 'let' sign blown out of the ground. I hear that out in the exposed parts around the city it was much harder work cycling in this morning - but it was pretty calm by our (delayed) ride out this morning at 8:30 (yes, we both put our ride off for a while due to local news reports making it sound like ragnarok).

What was most surprising was how many motorists obeyed the advice to 'leave it until later' - at rush hour there were way more cyclists on the roads than motorists (as opposed to slightly more, as is usually the case) and, frankly, that was fine. It wasn't even that windy here by then. 

The down side of this was, of course, that there were fewer cars so those that were on the roads were being driven faster, often giving less space while overtaking at higher speed. So what we gained in a lack of traffic we lost in that traffic being horrid. 

On the whole Cambridge copes pretty well with wind and storms - except for the fact that the city is basically so flat and ill surfaced that there can be an horrendous problem with standing water in places. But the individual motorists in Cambridge? They're no better at slowing down for wind and wet roads than they are at clearing the snow off their cars. The typical scofflaw attitude we're used to continues on through spells of bad weather.

Frosts of Winter to look forward to now. What joy.