As most will have noticed, we've been to visit the other half's parent's in Saulkrasti, Latvia. On the way out we cheated and only drove as far as Lubeck Travemunde in Germany and took a 23 hour ferry crossing to Liepaja in Latvia, but on the way back, there wasn't a convenient ferry so drove all the way. However, there was an event in Liepaja on Saturday that we wanted to go to, so came back via there too. Unfortunately, there's a bit of Russia (Kaliningrad) between Lithuania and Poland so you have to go round that making it a less than direct route. So with going via Liepaja and avoiding the Russian bit meant the route that we took was a bit further than a direct one and included a stop off with my step daughter in Lelystad, Netherlands for a decent nights sleep. The temperature was below freezing and snowing as far as Warsaw and the HEVAC didn't get up as far as 0 degrees C until we were well into Germany, by which time the snow and turned to sleet and then rain. So we knew we were getting closer to England.
It did mean that a milestone was hit just before the Belgium/France border though......
The car behaved faultlessly all the time. The highest temperatures we saw all week was -3C and there was 40cm of snow on the ground. Interesting that we were hearing about snow in the UK causing a state of emergency to be declared and roads closed but no such thing there. The snow falls, they send out a snowplough to clear the roads down to about 5cm so you can see where the road is. After that, the traffic clears it if there is enough. So main roads get cleared after a while, more minor roads are left with tyre tracks while side roads are still a couple of inches of hard packed snow that you drive on. With decent winter or all season tyres, it isn't a problem at all and I had to try really hard to get the traction control or ABS to kick in by booting it and then stomping on the brakes.