Not quite as dramatic as some of the above but...........

Back in 1981 my ex and I went to Cornwall for a few days in late April.

We were travelling back, intending to spend one night in North Devon so that he could show me Lynton and Lynemouth and decided that there would be the best place to stay.

Lynton and Lynmouth are like twins, one village complementing the other.

Lynmouth is wedged between a steep cliff and the ocean on North Devon's coast, while Lynton looks down from the 500ft high clifftop on her twin. The views from either are glorious. You can see, on a clear day, across to the Welsh coast. We had the choice - both were lovely but I wanted a room with a view of the sea so up we went to Lynton to look for a hotel.

We found one on the edge of the cliff - can't remember the name now but it looked quite imposing. We booked in and went off for a meal in Lynemouth and a look round.

When we returned to the hotel we went into the lounge for a drink and to sit by the fire as the temperature was going down quite fast. We were served our drinks by the hotel owner - it seemed that that early in the season he had no staff - and were just sitting chatting to him when he excused himself, saying that he needed to get some more wood for the fire. He came back about five minutes later with a load of what looked like floorboards! Geoff and I just looked at each other and hoped that they weren't from the floor in our room!

We went off to bed, having been told that we had the luxury of an electric fire AND electric blanket - a necessity, given the ambient temperature right then. Unfortunately there was only one socket in the room, which could be used for the bedside light, fire and blanket so we had to make a decision. We ended up cuddled up in bed with the blanket on playing crib by torchlight while we waited for the bed to warm up enough to allow us to sleep.

Next morning we got up early to continue the journey to find the owner up and about cooking breakfast for us and commenting that he had finished all his chores and had nothing to do until pub opening in four hours time. breakfast was good, but I was puzzled by the sound of a sheep close by, in the middle of a small town on the edge of a cliff. Turned out it was the hotel 'lawn mower' - in view of the steep inclination if the lawn a more practical choice than the mechanical kind.

We set off that morning to head for home in Hertford. The travel news was of snow in the West, but that didn't really bother us too much. Who sees much snow in the UK, we thought. Travelling along the M5 we could see the Mendips in the distance, and, unusually for that time of year, the tops were white. Geoff had the brilliant idea to go see Cheddar Gorge in the snow.

We left the motorway and headed toward the Gorge. We were travelling down the road that goes through it when a 4wheel drive came the other way, flashing his lights and basically signalling no go. Geoff reckoned if that guy couldn't get through then we were probably not going to be able to either. We turned round, headed toward the motorway. He decided to go toward Wells and we were travelling along, through the snow, when we came to a hold up, with a number of vehicles turning round and heading back the way they came. Turned out that there had been a fatal accident further up the road and the police were advising against going that route.

We finally managed to get back onto the M5 by a very circuitous route and followed the snowplough down the M5 and M4 east. We could see humps by the side of the road – vehicles obviously abandoned by their owners for one reason or another. I remember feeling as if we were in a cocoon of comfort in a hostile world right then and hoping that that feeling would last to see us home.

We stopped at a service station to phone the kids and let them know why we were so late getting back. When I said that we had been caught in snow the reply was "what snow?".

By the time we got to Reading there was no snow to be seen.

We later heard that the West Country was cut off for a day or so, due to the heavy snowfall and we got out just in time.