Customers face fourth night snowed in at Britain’s highest pub | Pubs

Sixty-one people face a fourth night snowed in at Britain’s highest pub with a best-dressed snowman competition planned on Monday to pass the time.

Guests who had travelled to the 17th-century Tan Hill Inn in the Yorkshire Dales on Friday night to watch an Oasis tribute band have been trapped ever since as Storm Arwen hit the UK, with staff laying on pub quizzes, board games and karaoke for entertainment.

Blizzards causing 9ft-high snow drifts meant a tunnel had to be cut from the front door, but roads remained impassable owing to fallen power cables that had blown over in the high winds. Mountain rescuers had made it through the snow to attend to one guest who needed medical attention for an ongoing condition.

Mosts of the guests, who are all adults, slept on sofas and mattresses spread on the stone-flagged floor and had access to showers. As well as acoustic performances by Noasis – now nicknamed Snow-asis, according to the pub’s general manager, Nicola Townsend – the group have watched films shown on a projector and enjoyed a traditional Sunday lunch.

“We were supposed to have a best-dressed snowman competition, but the temperatures just been too cold out there. So if we get stuck today, I think that might be on the agenda” Townsend, 52, told BBC Radio 4’s the Today programme.

The group will find out on Monday whether roads have been cleared enough to leave but are already planning a reunion.

As well as food, drink and entertainment, Townsend said staff “have made sure that personal hygiene has been taken care of”.

“We’ve all become really good friends actually, the people that are here. I’ve said this before and it sounds a bit like a cliché, but they came as strangers and they’re leaving as friends, they truly are”, she added.

This is not the Tan Hall Inn’s first snow-in. The pub, which stands 528 metres above sea level, housed staff and four guests for five days in 2013 after deep snow drifts cut off the road.

Tracy Daly, the pub’s then landlady, told the BBC that the stranded punters had helped out staff members and most importantly, the beer had not run out.