Speaker - Simon Baldwin

Tue, Mar 6th 2018 at 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm


Club member Simon Baldwin regaled the assembled company with tales of his convoluted journey to beat “The Beast From The East” during last week’s fierce weather and snowstorms.

Having set off by train on the Tuesday for meetings in London and Oxford, Simon had told his family to expect him back home the following day.

Best laid plans, and all that…….

Simon arrived in Euston Station to find the streets of London deep in snow. He said he had ploughed his way through the streets (which must have pleased the locals when no gritters had appeared!) and after his meetings discovered all flights and trains to Scotland had been cancelled indefinitely.

After finding an hotel room, he caught a train to Newcastle the next day, on the basis it would take him halfway home to Scotland.

Once again an hotel room was necessary as there was no transport heading north from Geordieland. And not one car hire company had a vehicle available.

Simon therefore began to use social media – Twitter in particular – to source some method of getting home. He was astonished at the huge response from the many people trying to get home, including a message from BBC Scotland’s London political correspondent Nick Eardley, on behalf of his father who had been stranded in Newcastle for three days.

Eventually, Simon, Mr Eardley, a chap from Perthshire and a Portuguese man who had business in Edinburgh agreed to attempt a shared taxi journey back to Caledonia.

This was eventually achieved on the Saturday when a taxi driver based at the closed Newcastle Airport offered to take the foursome north at a very reasonable cost of £80 each.

As the main A1 road north was still closed, they had to journey across country to Carlisle, then north on the M74 to Glasgow and then the M8 to Edinburgh. All of which was accomplished smoothly and safely.

The taxi driver even agreed to drive the Perthshire resident to his home further north.

Simon recounted how, in time of stress and need, countless people from all over the country had offered to help out. Also that as folk in many parts of the UK are still cut off by the weather, some 350,000 people were still talking on Twitter about the Beast From The East.

Simon told the company that his experience of a “bizarre and extraordinary week” was a fine illustration of how modern communications – often criticised for being harmful – brought people together when necessary.

In proposing a vote of thanks Iain MacKinnon praised an entertaining presentation which was also thought-provoking when people realised how sad it could be that it often took painful and brutal conditions to persuade all to help their fellow man.

'What We Do' Main Pages: