"Breconshire County Winter 1963. The A4067 Sennybridge to Abercrave was closed for about six weeks on and off. The Brecon Bus to Swansea had to turn around at Cray village in the day time before the road was open all the way.

I was driving a caterpillar bulldozer on hire from Edderson Plant Hire Newport, Gwent, trying to open the road. In some areas the snow was about 6 to 7 foot high, you would open the road for about a mile with the snow blowing in back behind you all the time so next day you had to start all over again.

It was so cold some days that the diesel fuel would freeze in the Caterpillar engine. After about four weeks we were getting nowhere. The county surveyor Mr R. H. Daniels hired a big bulldozer from Morgan Plant Hire, Cardiff, Glamorgan, that was making the new Head of the Valley Road at Brynmawr that was in Breconshire then.

The driver of the bulldozer on the way into Cnewr Farm the snow was so high he was pushing the fences over and ripping the cats eyes out of the road. The road A4067 was open in about two days for single file traffic, we had to make a passing area.

One night we were told to wait till about seven pm for a convoy of lorries from Port Talbot Steel Works which was the steel company of Wales then. The car factory in the Birmingham area had run out of tin plate to make cars. About a hundred lorries came up from the Swansea Valley with a police escort all the way to Birmingham.

One day I had to go back to Cray village to a farm where a lady was ill. The weather was so bad we could not get there so the Doctor from Sennybridge went to Sennybridge Army Camp and had about ten soldiers and an army ambulance carry the lady up the fields to Cray Village and by ambulance to Brecon Hostpital.

I was living in Llanddew Village and I had to walk to Brecon in the Waltons then. You could not walk the road to Llanddew Village from Brecon which was about three miles, you had to walk the fields for about weeks. I was getting home about ten pm at night and was back in Brecon Council yard for 6am in the morning.

One morning Mr R. H. Daniels the County Surveryor told me and two men to go to Arnold Baker in the Walton Brecon to deliver bread to the Heol Senni area. We must have walked about twenty miles with some of the roads still closed.

An amusing thing happened in the town of Brynmawr that was in Breconshire then. The snow was about four foot high and they cut it with a snow blower. They were about halfway down the street and blowing the snow over the roof of the houses when something went wrong. They blew the bedroom window in one house when the man and woman were in bed. They had to call the fire service to get them out!"

Article by W. Roger Jones