Weathering Winter in London

Since I consider myself to be a hardcore Canadian, happiest during the chill of mid-February while tramping through piles of snow, I was quite surprised by my own unenthusiastic reaction to my first English winter. I was promised a mild and gentle one, but I didn’t get either. I’m not sure if I’ve become a weather wimp or if it really was just damn cold and near never-ending.

Newscasts have hyped the winter of 2010 as the coldest winter Britain has seen in 100 years, with conditions causing “widespread, persistent and severe” problems. Though I scoffed back in December, I have to admit it has been bad and I have had about enough.

A text from home earlier this week clinched it. The friend reported that it was 12 degrees in Toronto, while we were still bundled up in coats, toques and mittens. Now, as you read this, I must confess, we have been experiencing a taste of spring over the last few days (though tempered with those truly English showers). But it is completely deserved as it comes at the tail-end of an honestly brutal winter.

I have to preface this by explaining to you all that the cold in the UK is very different from the cold in Canada. I’ve tried to explain it to people and the best I can do is this: While the Canadian winter has a fresh and crisp cold that is completely tolerable – even at -10 degrees – the winter nippiness in Britain comes along with a dampness that seeps right into your bones and chills you to your core.

Back in late December, when the chill first arrived, I was the first to scoff at my new friends and neighbours. I was working at the café inside the Virgin Media offices where we were tuned into the BBC all day long. Running up to the holidays, the news was solely focused on the country being besieged by heavy snowfalls. On the national level, I will admit, there was a lot of snow. It came down in the northern part of England and in most of Scotland, resulting in the closure of schools, the destruction of small towns and even a few deaths. One lady left home to pick up her Christmas turkey and only returned home in 2010.

In London, small snowstorms were blown out of proportion. “Blizzards” dropped very temporary snow, but caused traffic jams and transport cancellations around the city. I teased people about their reactions, advising the Brits to visit Canada if they wanted to experience a real winter (Note: Don’t try to one-up the English, even if neither one of you wants to be in the lead on the matter. Apparently, the Americans do it a lot, jousting in a “mine’s bigger than yours" manner that the Brits find quite rude.)

The London snow barely left an imprint. A light dusting was the worse you would see and this happened only when the snow had the nerve to come down without its usual charming wetness. However, unlike Canada, the UK is not set up very well for the season: they have no snow tires and no infrastructure for clearing snow – none on the whole island. I let this fact convince me to lighten up on the frantic news reports and swollen reactions from the general public.

Then the Eurostar broke down due to cold weather en route from Paris and London. Experts found that the failure was due to leaving the cold air in northern France and entering the warm air inside the Chunnel. Headlines leading up to Christmas proclaimed: “Four Eurostar trains stuck in Channel tunnel” and “Thousands freed from Chunnel after trains fail.” Passengers heading home for the holidays were trapped in the Chunnel overnight with disturbing reports of pandemonium reaching London as the air conditioners broke down along with the bathrooms, leaving travelers to urinate on the floors.

While the Eurostar struggled to reassign passengers to new trains and clear up the disaster, I couldn’t believe that something as innocent – and quite common – as some cold air could bring a halt to the fastest train in the world (Central London to downtown Paris in just over two hours). How is it that a country (or two) considered to be on the cutting edge of technology, manufacturing and transport could screw up something like getting a simple train from A to B?

It’s just another example of a continent (perhaps a generalization here, but come on) that is so ill equipped for a little winter weather that the city literally grinds to a halt. When I was heading out to Gatwick on 23 December, the line-ups at St. Pancras spiraled out to Euston Road. I was happy, for once, that I was not on my way to Paris. Instead, I was heading home to Canada for the holidays, looking forward to a real winter, despite the sporadic and chaos-ensuing snow that had recently fallen in London.

And now it’s nearly April. March is meant to come in like a lion and out like a lamb. The first part certainly proved true. We haven’t seen any snow in many weeks now, but the cold chill has pervaded most of the month. In protest, I have started wearing my spring coat anyways along with flats and bare feet. Today, on the cusp of spring, I wandered around Chelsea with my coat unbuttoned and saw daffodils in Battersea Park – all signs of promising weather to come.

Hopefully, by this time next week, when March finally wraps up, spring will have come to the UK for good. And then it will only be a matter of weeks before that glorious London summer is upon us.