WE may not be exposed to some of the more extreme variations in the weather, as experienced elsewhere in the world, but the good old British weather can still come up with a few surprises to set the sphincter twitching.

Mrs Hextol and I went to Rothbury on a wet and miserable day last week and were on the way home when we noticed the sky ahead had turned as black as the hobs of hell.

“We are going to get even wetter before we get to Bellingham,” I predicted as we splashed through the vast puddles that are seemingly a permanent feature of the road between Hepple and Elsdon.

Apart from a dusting on the noble peak of distant Muckle Cheviot, there was no sign of any snow or frost, but having just gone through Elsdon, we rounded a bend heading for the A696 junction south of Otterburn – and the car took leave of its senses.

It slid one way and then the other, mounted the grass verge and veered from one side of the road to the other, as I twirled the wheel ineffectually and Mrs Hextol clung on for dear life.

It was like being in a dodgem car, and I almost expected to find a swarthy fellow standing on the back bumper demanding sixpence for the ride.

Mercifully, we slid to a halt after some 100 yards of bob sleigh mayhem completely unscathed, although I have to confess the dramatically-wavering tyre tracks on the road were not the only skidmarks to be found.

Mrs Hextol and I looked at each other in stunned silence, and then noticed a couple of yards away a woman had not been so lucky.

Her car was embedded in the drystone wall, and she was still in the driving seat looking stupefied.

Mrs Hextol jumped out to render whatever assistance may be necessary – and found it almost impossible to keep her feet. Once she was satisfied that the driver was not injured, Mrs Hextol tip-toed gingerly back to our car like someone trying to walk on a cascade of ball bearings

It soon became apparent that what had turned the road into the Redesdale equivalent of the Cresta Run was a massive accumulation of hailstones, over a length of only a few hundred yards of the carriageway.

They had apparently been disgorged from the stygian sky we had witnessed from afar, creating conditions which made it nigh on impossible to drive safely. What looked like a wet road was, in fact, one which was encrusted in millions of globules of deadly ice.

The car was still prancing like a nervous thoroughbred at the starting gate when we finally got going again at less than five miles per hour, and I had visions of sitting at the roadside until the hailstones melted.

But within a hundred yards, the hailstone surface was no more, and within a mile, the road was completely dry.

Whether global warming was to blame for the phenomenon I have no idea, but the experience did make me thankful that we live in a country where the weather tends not to put lives at risk.

In Humshaugh, Haltwhistle and Halton Lea Gate, hurricanes hardly happen, and the Labour administration at County Hall is doubtless taking credit for the fact we have had no winter to speak of for around five years, and blaming previous administrations for the fact that expensive gritters are standing idle in depots across Northumberland.

Gone are the days when it would snow around Boxing Day, no grass would be seen until the end of March and truckers would light fires under their wagons to melt the diesel.

The only snowmen some children have see are Olaf from Frozen or the one that floats around our Christmas television singing a haunting tune.

Many children have never had the pleasure of creating a slide on the school playground, where a long line of boys would shuffle their feet together in the snow to create a length of polished ice Torvill and Dean would be proud to Bolero on – at least until the grumpy caretaker came along with a shovelful of ashes from the school boiler to put an end to the fun.

Like conkers, snowball fights are probably banned now for cotton-wooled kiddies, who will also be denied the pleasure of riding a bike along a frozen canal, or smashing through the ice on a frozen pond to test the resilience of your wellies.

Global warming? Huh!