The Big Freeze Of 1963 Tonight At 9Pm On 5

[Bobbisox1]

Eh ba gum, they don’t ‘ave Winters like that anymore :0/

[DTCwordfan]

I remember cars on the ice on Lake Windermere.

One dipstick left his car running to keep the engine warm while he went skating, a Humber if I remember right - sure enough the inevitable happened, the ice opening up and the car disappearing in a 100 ft of dark water.....

[DTCwordfan]

And going to school near Carnforth, the snow piled 8 or 9 feet either side of the lane between the two villages of Kellett.

[-SharonA-]

I remember it well. Walking 2 miles to school in deep snow!

[DTCwordfan]

It was snow joke, Sharon!

[Togo]

The ground was frozen from November till March in SoT, and the snow was waist deep in parts for months on end. Icicles hanging from every building and my job was to keep a coal fire burning 24/7 as it was the hot water supply via a back boiler. Once that froze up you were in trouble and some neighbours were in that position.

[wolf63]

I missed it, I didn't turn up until September.

[EdmundD]

Remember it well, living out at Dewsbury and couldn't get to school in Thornton.

[Buenchico]

It were a bit nippy then, as I recall:

[davebro]

63 bah! what about 46/47 & there was another when I was at primary school - probably 1954-ish. A double decker bus
drove past our school through a drift that was higher than the bus!

[douglas9401]

It was the heyday of the one-liner though, anything to break the ice.

[Stickybottle]

I always thought my dad exaggerated when he said the snow was the height of the bus that passed through the village but I subsequently found out he was not fibbing as I had suspected

[jno]

I remember reading about it in the papers while sitting under a banana tree and wondering what is this thing they call snow.

[Bobbisox1]

I rember my sister phoning our Mam Ona party line to say her 2 boys were sliding of the church roof in Kent where they lived

[Togo]

I think that we invented "ice speedway" back then. I was 14/15 and we all used to race on the frozen Wesport Lake in Longport. We marked a track off and used to remove the tyres to race. The noise was something off Worldly and we would bellow with laughter when anyone came a cropper. Mental mad days that only made us stronger. Can you imagine the elfin safety gonks now? They would want to lock us up.

[derekpara]

I remember it very well. I really learned how to drive on snow and ice by the end of that winter.

Walked the length of Virginia Water in Windsor Great Park and saw an old Austin 7 on the Thames near Hampton Court.
Just a single coal fire in our rented house near Brixton. Windows frosted up inside and out. No wonder I've survived to nearly 90 !

Cheers. D

[Bobbisox1]

Well done Derek, B.A x

[jno]

they danced the twist on the Dee (at about 55 seconds)

https://www.cheshire-live.co.uk/news/chester-cheshire-news/nostalgic-video-big-freeze-1963-14028437

[Togo]

Imagine it now. No deliveries because the roads are "unsafe" and vehicles immobilised, no gas because the pipes and valves are frozen, no solar power because the panels are covered with snow, no electric because the power lines are down, and no coal cos it it is destroying the planet. We are being led into that situation by the eco loons. Back then a big coal fire and a bloke with a horse and cart sorted us out. The "insurance man" always managed to get to you no matter what.

[grumpy01]

Snowed heavily on Boxing night and snow didn’t all disappear until late March.

[237SJ]

Is this the same programme that has been shown a couple of times before? (last time as part of Winterwatch and introduced by Chris Packham)