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A Blast from Siberia

28/2/2018

Snowy and sunlit anthills, with ash trees

My high Arctic wellingtons rarely have an outing. With a red neoprene lining they’re made for extreme weather from Siberia, for snow and sub-zero. Thick winter socks fit snugly, the outer pair knee-high so my feet are cosy. Cumbersome giant feet.
Ski-mitts are warm but unwieldy. Hat and hood keep me warm until I turn toward home, into the east wind, into a blizzard! Snowscapes have a transient beauty and the challenge is to capture the essence of the day in word and image.

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The Snow Queen's Coming

27/2/2018

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Sunlit snow crystals and the cloud that made them

Siberian weather comes from the east and the air-waves are fraught with warnings of the Snow Queen's coming. The skies over Cumbria are puzzling: an early expanse of sunlit blue slowly patterned with sombre clouds. On Scout Scar escarpment I watch snow-cloud sweep across the Lyth Valley until snowflakes swirl softly about me. Light fades and it's bitterly cold, far too cold to linger long.

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Winter light: homage to Nan Shepherd

22/2/2018

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Ash on Scout Scar, 21 February

The Living Mountain is full of glorious winter light. I promise myself another chapter of Nan Shepherd later in the day.
Bird song carries on a still morning. The yaffle of green woodpeckers, chaffinch and great tit, robins dominant. I listen for skylark. Any time now they'll return to Scout Scar. I know not to expect their song-flight until they've settled in, learnt their song again. Perhaps there's a tentative skylark phrase- I can't be sure. The weather forecasters warn that a blast from Siberia is coming our way so that will be a shock for wildlife. Today is mild and balmy.

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Brueghel on Scout Scar

18/2/2018

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Scout Scar escarpment

Snowfall transforms Scout Scar into a Breughel landscape. The Hunt, perhaps. Alarm calls from pheasants in the woods below the escarpment, and the sounds of gunfire. Snow gleams on the distant fells. Breughel knows that an inspiring landscape needs mountains, so he conjures them out of thin air. Cumbria has the real thing.
Through a sequence of images the cloudscape is changing on a glorious February day.
Yesterday might have been Breughel's 'A Gloomy Day': low cloud and mud everywhere.

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Cartmel: Howbarrow and Ellerside Ridge

15/2/2018

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Yellow brain fungus, Tremella mesentrica

  'What flowers can you find in February?' The challenge was thrown down as we set out from Cartmel Race Course.
We could expect mud, after rainy days. But we don't need The Archers no complaining for Lent.  Ramblers don't do complaining. We are here to enjoy the day and the chill wind quickly has us looking fresh-faced and invigorated.
Amongst the gorse I'm looking not for  the scatter of yellow flowers found at any season, but for a winter-special. A glimpse of deep gold, the soft jelly- lobes of fungus fruiting out of wood.   Tremella mesentrica, yellow brain fungus.

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Langdale: a winter's day

8/2/2018

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To Blea Tarn, with Side Pike 6 February

The Langdale Pikes to the north-west, Wrynose Pass and Wetherlam to the south. Vistas from Side Pike: a focal point as we approached Blea Tarn and dropped down above Blea Moss. We reached the foot of Wrynose Pass, impassable under snow. Tyre tracks from a farm vehicle and a few footsteps told who had passed this way on the morning of 6 February 2018. And earlier pioneers? At the foot of the pass we looked for Vikings.

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Langdale in winter

6/2/2018

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Snow fell at dawn, transforming winter trees. Ethereal and rare, they assumed a lightness of being. Catch it while you can, it's seldom seen and cannot last. As the morning temperature rises feathery layers of snow crystals compact and begin to melt, swags tug free of branches and fall to earth, pitting the snow beneath the trees.
By afternoon, trees showed sombre and sturdy once again.

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Vistas from Scout Scar

5/2/2018

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Looking north from St John's Church, Helsington

For a panorama of winter fells Scout Scar is a good place. We set out from St John's Church, Helsington, toward a snowscape of fells gleaming on the horizon and headed north, along Scout Scar escarpment.
Bel was returned from a mountain leadership course and our thoughts were on reading landscape and weather. From a blue sky, clouds began to form over the fells, until the sea over Morecambe Bay gleamed and dark cloud loured and unleashed hail.

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