Weather
Weathering the storms
The weather in Coquetdale’s remote uplands has always been a challenge.
It wasn’t unusual to have three months of heavy snow in winter. This would leave the valley cut off from the outside world.
Water sources froze. Peat and coal for fires and stoves were used up. In very hard winters, some families ran out of food for themselves and their animals.
‘In years gone by, no-one was panic-stricken by a hard and snowbound winter. They were all prepared, and began to stock up in September.‘
Lizzie Robinson, local postwoman from the 1930s to the 1960s.
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What’s your story?
Have you ever been caught out by bad weather?
Where were you and what happened?
A bit of blether
Gannin’ oot in the snaa?
Pull on ya pokys and divvn’t get ya fingers nithered!
Forward planning
Each winter, in about September October, a wagon would go up to Kidlandlee with flour and sugar
and whatever else the family that lived up there would need to see them through the winter. There
wasn’t a shop to go to and nobody could get to them half the time. They got their supplies in the
autumn and that lasted them through.
Keith Lee, born in 1942, whose family owned remote Kidlandlee Farm when he was a child
Weathering the storm story
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