But England, oh England... you really need to strap on a pair. 3 flakes of snow and chaos ensues - on the trains, on the planes, on the roads - everywhere you look, people are moaning about the snow. And why is that? Because the Government seems to think that snow doesn't happen in England, so when it does, they are absolutely gobsmacked and completely unprepared for it.
Just to illustrate what I mean.... here is a picture taken during the snow in the UK in the past week...
And then....
However, joking aside, I will admit that when a country is unprepared for snow, bad things can happen and you just have to be really careful if you're going to venture out. That is why most people are sent home from work early or advised not to leave the house unless absolutely necessary, because not enough is done to ensure that the roads are made safe when bad weather arrives.
But then, we just had to look at how the snow transformed our little village to forget about all the delays on the trains, the roads and everywhere else.
Such a lovely winter wonderland! The snow even wanted to get inside the house!
But, leaving all the chaos on the roads behind, Dave & I ventured out into the snow on Saturday with Lucy in tow. Bearing in mind that Luce is still fairly low profile, at just under 5 months old, she didn't seem to mind that her little paws were buried in snow for an hour and a half, not to mention the fact that her belly was skimming it for all of that time too! She absolutely loved it! She kept burying her nose in the snow - I'm not sure what she thought she would find there!
Across the lane from our house, there is a little dirt drive that leads to a school field. It's really quiet, I've hardly ever passed another soul when walking along there, so we headed in that direction first. We went over to the school field, where Lucy had an absolutely ball chasing snowballs that mysteriously disappeared as soon as they hit the ground.
Dave used the time to do some photography, while I kept a hold of Lucy. As she's still so young, she's not trained enough yet for us to allow her off the lead when we're in an open space. It's difficult to believe that we'll ever be at the point where we could do that, but I'm sure we'll get there one day! Until then, she continues to get hyper and wrap herself in knots with her lead!
We then headed across to the other side of the village, so that Dave could take some shots of the snow-laden fields. By this point, I would expect Lucy to show some signs of exhaustion, but she just carried on like a faithful follower - on Dave's heels wherever he went, completely unphased by the cold.
There's something I find really calming about snow. It seems to almost wipe the slate clean, to allow you to think that nothing is impossible. It also offers the opportunity to those of us with a small-time photography hobby to get some lovely looking photos, with very little effort. I've said before that I wish our eyes could take photographs - there was no way I could have captured the huge expanse of white that greeted us, it was just so beautiful to look at, but impossible to capture in a single frame.
On our way back home, we passed the village pond, which was completely frozen over. I always feel really sorry for the poor duck family who lives there - they never seem to fly south for the winter and we often see them plodding along, walking on top of the ice on the frozen pond. Poor ducks. I hope their feathers help keep their bums warm.
It's on days like this when I LOVE having a real fireplace. There's nothing nicer after coming in from the cold than having a roaring fire to cosy up to. A massive mug of hot chocolate rounds it all off nicely too!
For Dave's somewhat more professional photos, click here.
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