You may think me mad (lord knows, everyone else does), but I love driving in winter, so I was rubbing my hands together with anticipation as we got ready to set off on our epic drive. Of course, when I say I love driving in winter, what I actually mean is I love driving on cold, crisp days, cold enough for frost, but not cold enough for ice and with plenty of low winter sun to exercise my Serengetis.
What I don't mean is driving in the sort of conditions that we suffered for the start of our trip - heavy rain - inconsistently heavy at that, backing off enough to fool you into thinking that it's drying up before deluging you with wetness once again. Spray billowing up from behind and beside big trucks hauling up the inside lane is your greatest enemy, creating localised fog banks that can easily obscure the back of another car. It's the sad reality of living and driving on a damp, moss-covered rock sticking out into the North Atlantic.
It was a bit of a reminder to make sure your tyres are in absolutely spot-on condition. Our BMWs were brand new, running on either Continental or Pirelli tyres and even then they would occasionally twitch or shudder as a patch of standing water kicked in an aquaplaning response. The minimum legal tyre tread depth of 1.8mm is something of a bad joke in these conditions. Tyre makers suggest that you swap your boots once they hit 3mm depth and while that has the whiff of a money-making scam, it's actually pretty sound advice. Besides, tyre tech marches ever onward and by keeping your rubber up to date, you're probably saving some of your fuel cost by keeping your rolling resistance as low as possible.
Speaking of tyres, should we be fitting winter tyres? As we drove, and the rain cleared, the temperature certainly dropped down towards that seven-degree Celsius mark at which winter tyres are supposed to exert their superiority. With no sign of ice or snow to hinder our progress, you might think that softer compound rubber would be far from our thoughts, but you never know when things will turn more slippery. If you can, you should fit winter boots.
M'colleague Paul Healy will expand further on the nature of us being simply unable to have completed this journey in a single day not so long ago, but from a wintry perspective it bears repeating. Traffic naturally slows down when things are wet and cold, and the thought of having to go Dublin-Waterford-Cork-Limerick-Galway-Athlone-Dublin on single carriageways, in the dark, in the wet, with the temperature plummeting, simply doesn't bear thinking about. Our winters may have become harsher in recent years, but our roads are immeasurably better, so a falling pair of thermometer and barometer merely means being a bit more cautious these days.
Of course, there's an upside to winter motoring. Colder, denser air feeds the engine's needs that much better, while low temperatures means you get (slightly) more diesel or petrol for your Euro than on a hot summer's day. Worth reminding yourself of on days when it's still dark as the alarm clock goes off.
2013 road trip part one: best laid plans