SIXTY YEARS AGO
Tuesday February 12, 1963 Blizzard paralyses Mid Argyll – 12-foot snowdrifts
Towns and villages were cut off and traffic services disrupted when Mid Argyll was struck with the full velocity of the blizzard which raged throughout the country on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Roads became quickly blocked when high winds cause snowdrifts as deep as 12 feet in places which blocked two of the county’s trunk roads, the Lochgilphead-Glasgow and the Lochgilphead-Oban roads.
Lochgilphead, the centre of the county council’s administration, was isolated on Wednesday. Consequently many office workers took the day off as efforts to reach their work in the town proved hopeless.
Mail, newspapers and perishables were delayed although MacBrayne’s steamers relieved the situation by bringing in the mail some hours later than normal on Wednesday.
At Clachan near the Lochgilphead-Campbeltown road, accommodation had to be found in the village late on Tuesday evening for nine passages on a Campbeltown-bound bus.
Owing to deep snowdrifts the bus, which left Glasgow some hours earlier, could move no farther.
The road was not open for traffic until the weekend. The passengers stayed at Clachan on Wednesday and Thursday and left for their destinations on Friday. They walked over the fields to Whitehouse where they proceeded home by car.
On the Lochgilphead-Glasgow Road a similar experience almost befell bus passengers bound for the city but when the bus could get go farther than Glenkinglass, owing to deep snow drifts, the driver decided to return to Inveraray where passengers were able to return to their homes by the road over which they have just travelled.
That same day, Inveraray police acted as Good Samaritans to passengers on the Ardrishaig-Glasgow bus when they rescued them by Land Rover and took them onto Inveraray.
MacBrayne’s Loch Fyne service sailed from Gourock on Wednesday for Tarbert but tied up at Tighnabruaich.
Lochgilphead, which like Clachan, opened its doors to people stranded in the town on Wednesday, found itself without mail, newspapers and bread on Thursday morning.
The mail from Glasgow, which normally reaches the town at 6am by road, was not delivered to Lochgilphead post office until 4pm, having been brought part of the way by steamer to Tarbert.
Similarly the bread shortage was overcome on Wednesday by transferring to Lochgilphead the supplies intended for Campbeltown.
By Friday, things looked brighter when mail, newspapers and bread reached Lochgilphead although the bread was brought by sea to Tarbert.
Campbeltown, which had been entirely cut off, was relieved on Friday when bread and other perishables brought by steamer to Tarbert were taken south by a fishing vessel which was given a loud ovation when it sailed into Campbeltown harbour.
Two young dancers, daughters of Commander and the Hon Mrs Rickard of Kirnan, Kilmichael-Glassary, were anxious to attend the freestyle ballet class run by Mrs Elena Shane Barel, who received a pleasant surprise when the little girls arrived. No one else turned up.
The Hon Mrs Rickard put chains on her car tyres, motored over fields where the road was impassable, to bring her daughters to Lochgilphead.
The Crinan Canal was not officially closed to navigation through the week although in places the ice was more than 1ft thick.
The canal authority, which sent out the icebreaker to keep the channel from becoming exceptionally deep frozen, advised skippers not to attempt making the passage.
At Tarbert the heavy snowfall and gale-force winds upset road and sea services to Skipness, Carradale, Campbeltown and Kilberry; roads were completely blocked by deep drifts.