The Frozen North

You will need to click on the photos to enlarge them to see them properly. The river looked amazing this morning. The outdoor thermometer was registering 11.4F when B Baggins and I went out so I thought it might be worth taking the camera. In the 33 years I've lived here I've never seen Old Hay Brook frozen over to this extent. There have been icy borders at the edges once or twice in the past but nothing like this. It was even more frozen when we went this afternoon but I didn't take the camera thinking there would be less ice not more!

Each of the little weirs looked like a scene from The Snow Queen, there were tiny areas where the water was still flowing over but most of it must have been getting through underneath the ice.

This is a close up of the previous photo, you can see the blocks of ice and the small frozen waterfall with frozen foam at the base. I know this is a common sight in Canada and other countries in the northern latitudes but it isn't very common here I can assure you!

While the weather has been so cold I've been busy indoors. I made the Christmas cake two weeks ago and here I've unwrapped itso I can give it two more tablespoons of sherry. It's now back on top of the cupboard and will sit there until around the 16th December when I shall make the marzipan and put it on. Then that has to dry out for a few days before the final layer of fondant icing goes on. It's beautifully moist and smells wonderful!

I've started knitting again, this is the first thing I've made since I broke my wrist. It will be going in the post for George tomorrow. I'm now knitting a second rabbit also for George.

Some of you may remember seeing this one that I made for him earlier this year. He apparently loves it so much that Cesca can't get it off him to wash it so she's asked me to make another one in the hope that he'll accept the substitute on a temporary basis. Personally I wouldn't count on it:)

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It will be a quiet Christmas for us this year so I'm not doing quite as much baking and cooking as usual. However this morning I did a batch of tiny cheese scones.....

......and a fruit scone round which have joined the Yule Log and the Lemon Cream pies that are already in the freezer. Now I'm going to go and make a big pan of leek and potato soup and maybe a batch of cheese and onion tarts - the soup is for my meal this evening but the tarts are destined for the freezer - if I get round to making them anyway:)

Snowstorm

Winter is come in earnest and the snow
In dazzling splendour—crumpling underfoot
Spreads a white world all calm and where we go
By hedge or wood trees shine from top to root
In feathered foliage flashing light and shade
Of strangest contrast—fancys pliant eye
Delighted sees a vast romance displayed
And fairy halls descended from the sky

The smallest twig its snowy burthen wears
And woods oer head the dullest eyes engage
To shape strange things—where arch and pillar bears
A roof of grains fantastic arched and high
And little shed beside the spinney wears
The grotesque zemblance of an hermitage


Part of a poem by John Clare which seems appropriate at the moment. The photos are actually from January 2006 so I don't know quite why they are so blue - maybe I used flash? Who knows! We haven't had that much snow so far, just an inch or so here but I know that other parts of the UK have a good deal more. I feel as though it ought to be January as we don't normally have much in the way of snow in November and we certainly don't get the low temperatures, it was 14F here on Saturday night - decidedly chilly! The sort of weather for hot chocolate, a warm blanket and a good book. Not my destiny this week I'm afraid as I've sent DH over to our other house for the week so that I can do a proper deep clean of the house ready for Yule. Last time I sent him over there so that I could 'get on with things' I managed to break my wrist so I'm hoping hard that history isn't going to repeat itself!

Winter and Rough Weather

All the media hype about the snow during the past few days has made me think back to the days of my childhood and before when cold, snowy winters were the norm rather than the exception. The photo above was taken yesterday, a pretty sight and perfectly fine for walking in.



Now this is a rather different scene, a photograph taken in the Peak District in the winter of 1946/47, the very first winter of my life. Here German POWs are clearing snow from a railway cutting.



This photo and the next were taken in North Yorkshire also in 1947. Life was hard just after the war without any extra dificulties, both food and fuel were severely rationed,everyone had coal fires for heating and the power stations were also fuelled by coal but there simply wasn't enough coal being produced so the Government introduced power cuts - the electricity was off between 9am-12pm and 2pm-4pm every day and buying enough coal to light even the smallest of fires was like finding gold dust.



This man and his dog are dwarfed by the huge drifts at the side of the road but at least the snow plough seems to have got through by this stage. The snow began on January 21st in the south and southwest of England and it was the middle of March when the thaw began causing terrible flooding. In many parts of England it snowed virtually every day in February. This is an excerpt fom a book of mine called 'Letters From Compton Deverell' which was written during early February of 1947:

" The bitter spell has returned. Since I last wrote there has been a dramatic change, yesterday it snowed all day long and most of the night as well. Much of the north of England is cut off, Manchester and Buxton, Scarborough and Whitby are isolated, Lincolnshire is buried deep. The Great North Road is blocked near Grantham with vast drifts, trains are buried, farms are being provisioned by airplane, in short, it is the hardest winter in the memory of most people living today. "



So maybe things aren't so bad after all - the present day media have obviously never experienced a real snowfall or they wouldn't make so much fuss about what is, after all, just a few inches!



The Great North Road was the old Mail Coach route from London to York and Edinburgh which is now known, rather less romantically, as the A1. It runs up the eastern side of England through the flat Fen country and is a road I use regularly on my trips to Suffolk. It was once reknowned as a haunt of highwaymen including the infamous Dick Turpin. Nothing to do with snow but still an interesting bit of information :)

Edited to add that Roy, in his comment, has given a really interesting link to a Met Office article which I'm putting here as a live link since I can't edit the comment. Thanks Roy!

Snow

Like many other parts of the country we've been having some snow though it's only a light covering so far. It's beginning to snow more steadily now though and I suspect there'll be a fair amount by morning. I forgot to take my camera when I took B Baggins out this afternoon. He absolutely loves the snow and was racing up and down and rolling on his back waving his legs in the air and generally having a thoroughly good time. I've just opened the French window and taken a couple of shots down the garden.


This is the magnolia with a couple of the birdfeeders, I love seeing the white snow against the black tracery of twigs and branches. The garden has been full of birds all day between snow showers. The niger seed feeder has had goldfinches, siskins and redpolls on it all at the same time. I shall have to get all the feeders filled up again first thing tomorrow and see if I can get DH to take some photos, he's better at photographing birds than I am.

Snow!

We had a little snow this morning and Bilbo Baggins thought it was wonderful - he loves playing in the snow as have all my dogs. This includes my old Scottie, MacIntosh,who usually had to be carried home because he had so many snowballs attached to his back legs that eventually he reached the point where he couldn't walk properly! Thawing him out when we got home took forever and resulted in large puddles of snow all over the kitchen floor. Bilbo has much longer legs so happily he doesn't have this problem.


Me and my stick.



Life is such fun!


I do wonder,though, what kind of idiots run the British media. The headlines this morning were all about 'heavy falls of snow' 'battling to get to work' rush hour chaos' and so on. Now I do know that we had haven't had as much snow here as other parts of the country but even so - the projected accumulation of snow was - are you ready for this in Canada and the USA! - as much as 15 CENTIMETRES in places!! Well, heavens to Murgatroyd!! It is just pathetic really, I know that my friend in New England has at least 2 or 3 feet of snow most winters and other parts of the US and Canada have as much if not more. Many European countries are usually under several feet of snow for most of the winter months too. They must be laughing themselves silly when they see the hype on British TV and in the papers. As for battling to work through 3 inches of snow! I can remember several occasions in the 1960s when I walked the 3 miles to work from our village to the nearby town through a foot or so of snow, then at the end of the day I walked the 3 miles home again. There were lots of people doing the same thing and it was quite good fun really. We walked in small groups and chatted and laughed as we went. I can also remember a few occasions in the 1980s when it snowed and all the buses stopped running and my husband walked 8 miles home fom work. He staggered in finally looking like a dying duck, it had taken him nearly 3 hours because, as he got out of the city, the snow became quite deep and hard to walk through especially in black leather business shoes. It's a long time since we had snow like that.

Stormy Weather

Today has been a lovely, sunny day but pretty cold. Over the last ten days or so we have had some bad wind storms though and above is Bilbo Baggins among the top branches of a full grown ash tree that fell across the river near us at the weekend. This isn't the river in Eccleshall Woods - there are several close to us apart from the Limb Brook, this one is Old Hay Brook. Double clicking on some of the photos will make them clearer I think.


This is from a bit further back showing the main trunk actually across the water.

Another big branch that came down into the same river. The water level has dropped quite a bit now but last weekend it was running very fast and deep.

My husband was over at our other house on the Lancashire coast over the weekend to check up that all was well there. The bungalow is about 5 or 6 miles from Blackpool and he went up there with his camera and took these rather spectacular photos of the sea front. The promenade had been closed to traffic because it was so dangerous. I have to say that I'm very glad I wasn't crossing on the ferry to the Isle of Man that day! I may be a member of a seafaring island race but I am, regrettably, not a very good sailor! Mind you, Admiral Nelson wasn't either so I'm in good company!!


An even more spectacular wave breaking. Virtually every year people are swept into the water along this part of the coast and drowned because they don't respect the power of the sea and get too close.


Believe it or not there is an entire pier behind this wave.


And here it is!



Finally, I couldn't post about Blackpool without including a picture of the Tower.