And Still It Snowed

My prediction of slush and mud being the prevailing underfoot conditions for today didn’t quite prove to be true, but before I came to discover that we had to stir ourselves to get out of the house. Ready to go by just after 8am we then struggled to motivate ourselves to set out, as a glance out of the window told us that it had snowed some more overnight and that it was still coming down.

Eventually we had exceeded all previous records for faffing, and out the door we went. It took me fewer than three paces to realise that the expected slush was not going to be an issue. Yesterday’s rutted slush had frozen solid overnight and a fresh layer of snow had fallen on top, forming drifts in the fierce wind.

Mud proved not to be an issue either. The fresh snow boosted the levels enough that only at the boggiest wallow on our route did we sink through the snow and into the gloop. More of an issue was the deeply furrowed field, with snow filling in the dips. We fumbled and stumbled our way across there, sometimes sinking into a furrow, sometimes hitting the high ground.

Our route today took us down a lane I’ve not walked down before, which led me to discover a set of permissive paths that I didn’t know were there (there are a lot of National Forest Plantations around here, all of which feature permissive paths, but there doesn’t seem to be any way of finding out where they all are, other than stumbling across them, as we did today). That’s opened up some possibilities for extending my collection of local circuits.

I’ve included three snaps that I took today, even though one of them bears a remarkable resemblance to one I used yesterday. I can never resist a photo of that church.