Tuesday 11 February 2025: Fog

I had a lot of problems last week trying to upload the latest 3 books I’m publishing to Google Play Books. It was always so easy before, but I think they must have changed something somewhere over the new year period. The poor techies have been trying to help, but all they could see was that the files were correct and uploaded and they thought I should wait 12 to 24 hours.

I did wait 12 to 24 hours, but they were still stuck. So I had to chat with another techie, who finally acknowledged that there was a ‘known issue’ and promised they’d escalate it, keep an eye on it, and let me know if or when it was fixed.

That email finally came in on Sunday afternoon. It was something to do with the file names. Most books now need the Google key followed by _interior or _frontcover. We never needed those before. Before, the system was clever enough to know that a pdf or an epub was the interior and a png or a jpg was the cover. We got my last published book through using these file name additions, but that wasn’t cutting it this time.

Now, it seems, I just replace the filename with the Google key and leave the extension as .epub or .png. 

I wasn’t in a position on Sunday to try this out because we were out and about in Peggy, our campervan, giving it another blast after the alarm flattened the battery 2 weeks ago. This time we took it out for a bit longer and a bit further. 

We’d had a regular Saturday, doing the shopping. But on Sunday we were up earlyish for us on a Sunday and getting ready for our roadtrip. The van fired up straight away and we headed up over the Woodhead Pass to Glossop. The higher we drove, though, the foggier it got, until visibility was down to about 20 feet. Not great on a windy pass with a sheer drop on one side. 

But, we persevered, stopping on the way to have our late breakfast and completely fill the tank with diesel. We didn’t use a sat-nav, which would have helped in the fog, because the poet knew where he was going. He was less sure in Glossop itself, finding his way back to the Snake Pass to head home. But we didn’t take a single wrong turn.

There’s some controversy around the Snake Pass at the moment. The powers that be don’t want to keep paying to have it repaired and are talking about closing it completely to traffic. They say approximately 30,000 vehicles travel along Snake Pass every day. 

What they don’t seem to be considering is where those vehicles will go if the pass is closed permanently to traffic. Both the Woodhead Pass and the M62, the only 2 alternatives, are already choked with traffic, and the Woodhead Pass is frequently closed to high-sided vehicles. Plus, the M62 is gridlocked on an almost daily basis. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what’s likely to happen if the third route is closed. 

Incidentally, the story I wrote last month for 12 Stories in 12 Months, The Lost Sock, was inspired by the Woodhead Pass…

I’ve long said that freight should be moved back onto the railways and the canals, where possible. Many lorry drivers are, in my experience, knights of the road. But those trucks are heavy, long and unwieldy. And they’re slower than cars. However, I don’t think that’s likely to happen any time soon. In the meantime, I think there has to be at least one reliable route across the Pennines before they start closing the others down.

Yes, it would be lovely if Snake Pass was only open to walkers, cyclists, and those who need to drive to their houses along the road. And it is closed more often than the Woodhead Pass. But 30,000 vehicles every day need to have somewhere else to go first, and what’s there just doesn’t cut it.

Ahem, so anyway…we found our way to the Snake Pass from Glossop town centre and made our way back across the hills. There were 2 lots of roadworks on our way. The first looked as though it was almost completed and it looked like the road had sunk slightly. And we didn’t think that little thing merited closing the entire pass for ever.

The second…? 

Oh, my word. Half of the road, right up to the white lines in the middle, was gone. Completely gone. For about 20 feet. Therein lay the problem. I certainly wouldn’t have liked to have been on that side of the road when it went, and definitely not in the van. Fortunately it weighs less than half the maximum weight allowed to travel on the road. (Our van is about 3.5 tons, the maximum is 7.5 tons.)

Once we were past the danger zone, we parked up in a large layby, on the hill side of the road, and had our picnic. It was still very, very foggy, and we couldn’t see a great deal on the view side of the road, but it was still nice. And relaxing. 

We stayed for about half an hour, then we continued homeward. But we made a mistake coming back. We went via Sheffield city centre where there’s a clean air toll. If we’d realised sooner, we could have adjusted or I could have started up the sat-nav. But we didn’t, and we ended up going right through the middle of the clean air zone.

We stopped off at the house to empty the toilet cassette and give it a clean, then we took the van back to the compound and came home. We remembered the toll, and the poet was on it straight away. Good job. By paying on the same day it was only £10. If he’d waited until a minute past midnight, it would have jumped up to £50. And after 4 days, it jumps up again. But we didn’t get that far.

So, we had a nice little adventure at the weekend. And we know for next time to plan our route better and avoid Sheffield.

Today’s adventure will be in tomorrow’s blog post.