The windows of our van were almost totally covered with snow and solid ice. We could see virtually nothing but a Canadian prospect around us as we crept along, ploughing through the deep snow and the dark night. A whirling blizzard surrounded us. We were familiar with the extreme winter conditions in Canada. At least, it felt rather familiar to us because we had all seen the newsreels of Canadian winters with high banks of snow running like solid walls along their exposed highways. However, this was not a remote Canadian highway but, the now unfamiliar A701, the main Scottish road, which was completely obliterated from Edinburgh to Peebles. It was that bloody awful winter of 1962/63, still remembered as The Big Freeze.
We eventually slowed down at the ‘Road Closed’ sign picked out by our headlights when it loomed out from the driving blizzard. We turned gratefully into the parking lot of the isolated Leadburn Arms Hotel opposite the sign at the crossroads. The bar lights were shining through the gloom and it seemed like a good idea for us to drop in there to have ‘a wee refreshment’, before turning round to retrace our journey home. This evening had been a complete waste of time. There was no way we could make it to the gig tonight.
That’s when we met the two snowplough drivers.
Later, and now well refreshed, we piled back into our freezing cold van to follow the snow plough, now weaving a little bit. We followed in convoy style behind it all the way to their depot in Peebles to play our gig, silly buggers.
We only made one emergency stop for bladder relief. Luckily, the snowplough drivers made a decision to stop at about the same time or we might have been abandoned, slightly pissed and pissing into the blizzard. We joined our new friends and stood in line at the side of the road (wherever that was), shoulder to shoulder with them, peeing defiantly into the frozen wastes. Not one of us gave any thought about our return journey after the dance had finished. At what age do you get any sense?
I heard later that another band was also touring in Scotland during that cold winter of 1962/63. They were playing a mini tour in the North of Scotland where the weather was even worse. These poor guys were strangers in a strange land. They had come up north from Liverpool in England to tour Inverness and the Scottish Highlands and were freezing their asses off in their touring van. Their van, just like ours, also had no heater.
The band from Liverpool had resorted to stealing blankets and rugs from the small, cheap hotels they visited. They wrapped the stolen items around themselves to try and keep warm as they traveled the freezing Scottish Highlands during that terrible Big Freeze winter.
I heard the four of them had a really miserable time and were only too happy to head back down to England when their Scottish tour ended. They called themselves The Silver Beatles, an odd sort of name for a band. I sometimes wonder what became of them.
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