Witley on ice

Thought I would start this post with a few photos of our recent snowfall. Here in Worcestershire we had about a foot. We are quite elevated, there's a long hill at both ends of the village, and plenty of open countryside around us, so any weather is pretty much unhindered.

Woke to this on 8th December, (view from our bedroom window) but it wasn't deep and neither was it that cold, so we ventured out to Hanbury

  

Two days later, Sunday 10th, and this greeted us, view from the lounge this time, and look at that sky, plenty more up there! It snowed on and off all day.

The woodpecker arrived, and we only really see him in Winter (just above centre of pic and in the middle) 

11th December and a slow melt began, although you can see we have slightly more snow than yesterday morning

12th December and snow again, and a freezing fog moving in!

 For those of you in colder climates thinking "that's not much snow!", it is quite unusual for us to have as much as this and we do not have equipment etc to deal with it.  Some Winters we barely have a light dusting more than a couple of times during the season, which is why everything grinds to a halt and we all go a bit snow crazy when it happens!

Anyway, fast forward a few days to Saturday 16th, and we thought the snow had all melted so popped over to Witley Court, our nearest English Heritage property. We had the place to ourselves. 

The lake was still partly frozen, no ducks to be seen

The fountain too, thankfully it doesn't fire up in the Winter, bet the pipes were frozen solid

OH had some amusement skimming bits of frozen snow across the surface

There was even a decent amount of snow left on the ground

Just us, no-one else to be seen

On our favourite fountain there was a display of paper water lilies sitting on the frozen surface, in readiness for the first ever lantern festival at Witley.

The trees were being decorated with paper lanterns and battery operated fairy lights, you can just see little jam jars along the edge of the path, the only other person around was a man switching on all the little lights in the jars. 

Back at the shop and we treated ourselves to some Worcestershire wobble juice and fudge and ginger biscuits, for less than the cost of a cup of tea and cake.

Hope you have all had a lovely Christmas, Happy New Year to you all and see you in 2018!