Well, the local witches would almost definitely not have been flying last night, not unless they were well prepared wearing thermals underneath waterproof cloaks and with anti-freeze in their broomsticks! Why? Because it rained hard all night and also ... froze!
Driving up the mountain road this morning, the higher we got the colder the ambient air. The rising road can be usually divided into three distinct sections, the first third coming out of the village can like this morning seem quite calm and mild, then the middle third above the two cottages gets quite noticeably colder with signs of frost on the verges and on the road in the old church area gives a good indication of what awaits beyond the tiny hamlet, where we stopped off to let the chickens out onto deeply frosted ground.
And no that is not a pumpkin resting after a Halloween night of revelry, but an old ball ... just to show you what the conditions were like. It was raining lightly at this level with the buildings starting to defrost, water dripping everywhere. Then the last part of the journey this morning ... as we got higher, there was melt water flowing down the road at speed, carrying fallen leaves downward with it and ... above the mountain gate the whole of the commons was white with snow!
The crazy canine was elated. This to him is just water in another form and he was busy diving in and out of the snow encrusted rushes like a mad thing. He is actually in this photograph >>>
barely visible but burrowing in the vegetation looking for his ball. Meanwhile I was wandering about trying to take photographs with increasingly cold fingers.
But it was worth it.
In the scene above, ground mist was rising as the sky was lowering, forming a cloudy accumulation of horizon obliterating haze.
But then, patches of blue sky slowly started to appear.
I became busy trying to photograph sheep as they wandered a field ...
amongst them my favourite badger faced ewe being closely followed by a Welsh Mountain ram who despite the weather was showing interest in his harem of ladies.
Then as I turned around to head back towards the car, the skies just brightened.
Already the snow was turning to a muddy slush, the ground absolutely soaking.
Very cold water was hurriedly running downwards off the mountain.
Much as the mad mutt wanted to stay playing in and out of these temporary streams, my achey body had had enough and I just wanted to get back home and rest.
Ideally, I would have liked a long hot soak in the bath ... but ...
for the last week now the bath has been unusable due to a corroded plug hole
Try finding a trustworthy plumber! But by pure coincidence, just yesterday I bumped into one, he came round last night to evaluate the situation and returned this afternoon with all the kit he needed to fix the situation.
Guess where I'm off to now!
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