Skip to main content

Snow on snow

The defining feature of our trip to the UK this Christmas was snow. Lots of snow.

A few days before Christmas, snowstorms hit both the east coast of America, where some of my family live, and the south-east of England, my parents' residence. My grandparents had to cancel their 60th wedding anniversary party and my mom slipped on ice and almost got snowed in at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. Meanwhile in Texas, all this seemed far away and we flew out of D/FW airport on the 23rd in temperatures of about 22C/75F. While warm for this time of year, we didn't expect it to drop too far as we departed for icier climes.


However, a couple of days later I checked a friend's blog and saw this. It was hard to believe, but had we tried to fly a scant 24 hours later, we would have celebrated Christmas at the airport. If celebrated is the word.

Instead, we had safely reached my parents' house and were happily engaged in building our first snowman in many years. Meet Sidney the Seated Snowman.



Heading north to Graham's parents, we were enthralled by the silent hills sleeping beneath their snowy blanket. The air was so still that a snowplough scraping its way along the country lanes could be heard miles away. Down on the canal, ducks left waddling footprints on the slushy ice and dropped unconcernedly into dark chilly water. Can't they feel the cold? Our own feet were numb from the slush working its way through our boots, and we hurried home to warm them up with fluffy slippers and mulled wine.



New Year was spent in the Peak District. The sun shone and the hills were sifted with powdered sugar and royal-iced in shining peaks and curves. We slipped and slid up boot-trampled paths to the top of Mam Tor, and floundered, shrieking, through loose snow up to our thighs. It was awesome.





Returning to Reading to catch our flight home, we were disconcerted to hear that more snow was expected to fall that night. By 6pm it had started. By 8pm our car was thickly coated and we were discussing the likelihood of reaching Heathrow in the morning. We woke up to 7 inches and the white flakes still drifting down. Heathrow appeared to be the only airport in the UK still operating, so we swept the car free and ploughed carefully through the snow. Fortunately Mom and Dad aren't far from the motorway, and slow and steady made it. We drove into a whirling white blur with the radio reciting endless lists of school closures and the steady swish of salty slush beneath the tyres. Gradually the blur eased and the slush receded, and we were at the airport and on our way home.
Labels:

Comments

Limitless Snow said…
Nice article, which you have shared here about the snowstorm. Your article is very informative and I liked your way to share your experience in this post. Thank you for sharing this article here. Port Coquitlam Snow management service
9 January 2020 at 01:51
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

Laid-back Lille and Bustling Brussels

After a night in a tiny AirBnB in Canterbury , where there were chocolates on the table and artwork on every inch of the walls, we boarded a ferry with an absolute minimum of fuss, enjoyed a smooth crossing of the channel, and were deposited in the decidedly unscenic surroundings of the port of Dunkirk two hours later. Once we got past the cranes and shipping containers, though, the countryside was flat but pleasant. We stopped at a small town called Cassel, reached by cobbled roads winding up a hill. On the summit was an old windmill and a topograph telling you the distances to various improbable places; St Omer may have been visible in the haze, but Manchester was surely over the horizon.  In Lille, we found our apartment, unpacked the luggage (one rucksack apiece), and set out to find food. Our first choice was fully booked, so we embarked on that kind of aimless wandering where everyone is hungry and no one wants to actually choose a restaurant. We reached a Lebanese place call...
Post a Comment
Read more

Birmingham: Temples to many things

Birmingham's cathedral is overshadowed by more modern temples: the mirrored swirls of New Street train station; the dotted bulge of the Selfridges store; the lacy blocks of the library; the pillars and pediments of the museum and art gallery. Museum and town hall Next to all these, Birmingham Cathedral, in its square of dusty grass, isolated from the main flow of shopping and travel, seems less like a dominant building and more like a minor chapel. It turns out the unpretentiousness is deliberate. St Philip's Church was built in 1715 when the worshipping population of Birmingham had outgrown the medieval constraints of St Martin in the Bullring . Birmingham remained part of the Diocese of Worcester until 1905, when Charles Gore pushed for the creation of a new diocese and became its first bishop. Seeing the depth of need in the city, he decided to convert St Philip's to a cathedral rather than spend money on a grand new building. Birmingham Cathedral had to be restored afte...
Post a Comment
Read more