I don’t think we’ve had a bad winter so far. We’ve had a bit of snow at home, but it came and it went. The car has rarely registered anything lower than -1°c and the roads have all been well gritted.
We drove through a completely different world on Saturday!
We are staying in a cottage fairly close to Thetford on the Norfolk/Suffolk borders. The reason for being here is very sad, but suffice to say that we are staying close to Sharon’s sister Joanne and Mike’s place. There are no motorways in East Anglia, unless you include the M11, which skirts around the edge of the region, so our choice of route could include busy ‘normal’ roads, heavily used by all kinds of traffic, or the skirt-around route using the A1 and M11 and Newmarket.
However, we took an in-between route that skirted the north of Peterborough before delving into Fenland, via Wisbech and Downham Market. It was a fabulous fairyland of a journey.
The A47 can be fairly busy but on Saturday, just like the M62 and A1 at the beginning of our journey, it was delightfully quiet. As we got closer to Stamford, the temperature began to drop; -2°c, -3°c and occasionally -4°c, by the time we reached Peterborough and the A47, it was a steady -5°c and not wavering. At this stage we entered a winter wonderland.
The road to Wisbech is fairly scenic at the best of times, but this time the countryside was covered in a beautiful, pristine white.
East Anglia had had a good shuttering of snow last week and it was till there. What’s more, it was exceptionally cold too, reaching a low of -9°c around the centre of Fenland. This meant that everything above ground was covered in hoar frost.
It was a real pleasure to drive along this exceptionally gorgeous display put on for us by nature.
Sadly, there was nowhere to pull over and photograph, so much of what we saw has to be committed to memory, but the picture here gives something of the flavour.
The air-frost itself had begin to disappear by Downham Market, but the fields and surrounding countryside were still a pleasure to behold.
Thank you Mr and Mrs Nature.
Hoar Frost image details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Air_Hoar_Frost_2008-02-07.jpg by http://www.flickr.com/people/7365168@N03
Saturday Walks 