A snowy journey

It started very sleety and wet in Oban this morning but by 10.30 big flakes of snow were falling and accumulating.    My extra picture shows the view from above the town at just about that time. 

None the less I dropped in briefly at the opening of the new playpark which was being celebrated in the Atlantis Leisure Centre as the weather was too bad to be outdoors.  Then Cathleen and I set off for home.

Unfortunately the hill route over to Inveraray from Loch Awe turned out to be blocked by a bus which had slipped  off the road  and after waiting for 20 minutes or so  with no indication of when it might be clear we were forced to turn back and  take the much longer way via  Crianlarich , Loch Lomond and the Rest & Be Thankful.

That turned out to be just as difficult with long queues of traffic and heavy snow falling all the way until we reached Tyndrum.  Moreover the  phone signal was so poor we were  completely unable to find out anything about conditions ahead , something that emphasises the failure of the mobile phone companies to serve in any adequate way my rural constituency. and indeed rural Scotland.   I managed to tweet a few times about what was happening but it was impossible to receive very much or to use the Traffic Scotland App.  

The picture is of the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park boundary marker just before the village - which is in Bruce Crawford's Stirling constituency, of course.   

Conditions improved greatly thereafter and we eventually got home at 3.00 pm, four hours after we left Oban.   The journey normally takes an hour and a half.