St David's Eve

Tomorrow is St David's Day, March 1st.  I have bought some cut daffodils, which in the fire-warmth of the living room have started to open.  Tomorrow we will bake Welsh cakes and no doubt I will mull over the duller aspects of my Welsh family history.  March is not winter, as February is not spring, so this is my last Winter Journal entry.  I like the idea that there are days of the surrounding months in each month; that February has cold bright sunny days and March has hopeless dark wet days, but also April days of warmth and birdsong.  It has turned colder here again, cold enough for a frost perhaps.  

The days are longer and have seemed warmer, and our thoughts have stretched away from the fire to the garden and the outside world.  Our attitude if not the weather is becoming spring-like, vernal.  I want to be outside, planting and gardening.  My year has turned a corner and is heading for the summer, even on a cold night like tonight.  

I lost a few entries in January and early February and with moving house I lost the attention to small detail that I was trying to bring to the Journal.  And I have been without a camera for a month now.  But 'them's the breaks' and a small consideration.  I have enjoyed writing these observations and think it a good thing for a writer to work to even self-imposed deadlines.  

Another letter to an unknown reader.   Thank you for reading and following my Season.  No more of this Journal, but a Summer Journal will complete my on-line Year, and I will continue to write the landscape writings and Walkpoints blog. 

The Wood Train

Twice in a week I have shifted large amounts of chopped wood.  Last Friday I helped unload a trailer of logs, and today I cleared the old outside toilet of firewood.  We were fortunate to inherit a good store of firewood and two half-bunkers of coal; old coal, as the joke has it.  

Clearing the wood reminded me of the wood trains on the Ratty.  When I was younger I spent a few holidays volunteering on the Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway, the Ratty.  Most of the engines were steam-powered and ran on coal, but the drivers used wood to get a good blaze going.  Every couple of weeks a train of empty carriages was taken up to the woods at the top of the valley and halted outside a stone shed. This used to be a forge, but was now one of the railway's wood stores.  Filling every crevice on the train with eighteen-inch logs took about an hour, and the logs were unloaded again at Ravenglass sheds and then the carriages cleaned for the passengers.  It was a hard afternoon's work for a city-soft teenager, but great being out in the fresh air, the dense woods at the top of the valley, the strange old forge with its huge, silent furnace.  

Nearing An End

As the days lengthen, it has turned cool again.  In Presteigne yesterday everywhere seemed to be having a spruce up, a pre-Spring clean, but everyone seemed to be talking about the new cooler weather.  Stepped outside just now to see our afternoon's work; car-lights and farm-light pin-pricking the valley, owls on the hill in the last of the light.  

We spent the afternoon in the garden.  I managed to turn over the third 'new' veg bed, four made from one old large bed.  I am itching to get planting, but it will be another fortnight or a month until we can put anything out.  Gradually we change the garden, change the house; shift the orientation, reuse old rooms, bring old things back into use.  An ancient wicker basket, almost bottomless, cleaned out and lined with heavy plastic, makes an ideal kindling store.  The woodburner heats the house, fire becomes the heart of the cottage once again.  I switch the hall light off going to bed, and the hall is softly filled with firelight. Tolkien's Rivendell has a hall with no light but a permanent fire, a place of flickers and soft glooms, a place for thought and calm.  Every home should have one, at least for some of the time.  

Hedge Findings

We spent the afternoon filling gaps in the hedge.  The garden is bordered by old hedges, some holly, some hazel, some nondescript so we will wait and see.  We bought some bare-root hedge stock yesterday, a mixture of beech, field maple, hazel, dog rose and spindle.  This afternoon we cleared the dead leaves and stones from beneath the fence and dug a trench to plant them, about a foot apart.  We found fragments of roof tile (the house was once roofed with stone tiles) and some larger wall-stones.  We also found lots of washed-out pale blue pottery shards, as well as the more-usual willow pattern.  And a small, perfectly preserved, brass gas-lamp attachment, like a pipe designed by Jules Verne, presumably thrown out when the cottage was converted to electricity perhaps in the 1940s.  

Moorland

Driving home from Welshpool I noticed snowdrops everywhere; huge clumps along the roadsides, more than I seem to have seen before.   New grass cautiously springing up beneath dead blond stems.  A lot of mist and light rain on the moors as I drove out, which had cleared by the time I drove back.  I stopped at a steep bowl of hillside called the Ring near Felindre for elevenses, and sat and watched the shadows of the clouds moving over the brown hillsides.  Slow-moving shadows, the hiss of the wind in the grasses, white and rust-brown moorland ponies.  And the thin trickle of stony stream that becomes the River Teme further down the valley.  Out of Knighton the Radnor Forest rose on the horizon, deep black gullies still hiding seams of old snow.  

Cold Air

The days are noticeably longer.  The night starts fading at about 6.30am and it is still light until about 5.30 or 6pm; nearly twelve hours of almost-light.  A cool grey morning here, the tops of the Radnor Forest hills are under heavy cloud.  I have been doing some small jobs but opened the window so that I could hear the birds, as we have had some good birds in the garden recently; nuthatches, goldfinches, greenfinches, and this morning we saw a greater/lesser spotted woodpecker very briefly.  We hear the woodpeckers in the woods above the house but haven't yet seen them in the garden.  I have seen up to four buzzards over the woods and even a red kite.  

Perhaps the knowledge that this Journal finishes at the beginning of next week has lulled me into a feeling that winter is winding down.  But with the longer days and the milder weather recently, it feels as if spring is on the way, which it didn't last end-of-Feb as I made preparations for the Spring Journal.  

Fron Bache

Another bright, cool, breezy day, ideal washing weather.  As I was hanging out the washing just now, I could hear voices over the hedge in the graveyard next door.  A man and wife and their daughter.  They had come to tidy one of the graves and the little girl was asking questions.   'And she lived with Grandpa?' asked the girl.  'Yes, your grandmother,' said the father, implying to me at least that the grandmother had died before the girl was born.  When I was a child we would visit the family grave at Fron Bache in Llangollen at least twice a year, driving over in the autumn to tidy it for the winter and again in the spring to check that the winter hadn't been too hard on it.  We would spend a few moments tidying and cutting back the grass, perhaps righting the little pot.  My brother and I would have the job of replacing the lead letters that had fallen out; the O of Eyton, the family name I have inherited, the D of December.  Then we would have a pub lunch - the Hand, or the Britannia - and then visit cousin Arthur at Pen y Bedw.  He would be in the kitchen listening to Gardener's Question Time on Radio 4. We would stay for an hour or so before heading back to Liverpool.    Something of those Welsh Sundays has stayed with me, a day for family history and baking.   I thought of this house as the sort of Welsh cottage we would pass on our way home, the sort of place I would not want to leave. 

February Sunlight

For the first time this year I ate outside today.  It has been a warm day and the bench by the back door is in a suntrap, so I sat outside.   Everyone looks very grey at this time of year, due to the absence of sunlight; skin is cold and wan and needs warmth and sunshine.  I took my coffee up to the top of the garden and sat by the studio.  There were more birds about as I filled the feeders this morning, lots of blue tits and great tits, sparrows and robins.  I watched a nuthatch picking insects out of the old wall for about five minutes, and even as I write there are four buzzards wheeling high over the woods at the top of the hill.  And it has been a day of washes, to catch the thin warmth and the light breeze.  

Findings

I forgot to mention some odd findings recently.  Packing to leave Coombes Moor some oddities appeared in the garden.  A thick L-shaped iron gate bracket, perhaps snapped off and thrown to one side; heavy and rusted but still recognisable, a strong shape.  And the bowl of a clay pipe, still white and in good condition.  The history of pipes; did it once have a long stem or was it always short, strangely like a pot smoker's chillum?  The pipes designed to be smoked once and then thrown away always fascinate me, disposable Victorian  culture.  Or perhaps it was older, discarded one afternoon in the 1770s as the gang of men put the toll road through?  I remember one appeared in the garden of our house in Southport, and I think we left it there to be found by future owners.   Old clay pipes will become rarer, until no more are found and they will become collectable.  

And when the stove men put the woodburner into the old inglenook here at the cottage, they found a corroded, filthy brass button, which with a lick and a polish turns out to be a not-very-old naval button, the button off a reefer jacket perhaps.  What was it doing walled up in an eighteenth century inglenook 80 miles from the sea?  

All Weathers

I am disappointed that I won't manage the full 90 or near enough entries for this Journal, but with moving and packing a chunk was missed; never mind, I'll try harder with the Summer Journal this year.

Summer seems a long way off tonight.  Candlelight and firelight and a frost overnight; it is still very wintry.  But I had to go into Kington today and the sun in the valley was quite strong, almost warm.  There was no strength to it, however, and in the shade it was quite cool.  On the way back the back of this hill appeared quite soon after leaving Kington and as is the way with such things it felt a shorter distance coming home.  

There are still lines of wall-snow on the hills across the valley, the slopes of the Radnor Forest. Driving to Welshpool on Wednesday I saw great thick slabs of old snow even quite close to the road, cut away like the overhang on an iceberg or thick and silent like icing on a Christmas cake.  

But the season is winding down.  The days are noticeably longer and the daffodils, crocuses and primulas have started appearing in the old garden walls.  And there are snowdrops everywhere.  

Kite

Three times today as we drove to Dolau we saw red kites overhead.  Here they are relatively common, as mid-Wales is one of the least-populated parts of the country; we have good night skies and red kites.  And standing talking in our neighbour's garden there was one circling lazily overhead, endlessly hunting.  I have said before that they are like a bird assembled from leftover blades, a overlapping collage of broken scythes, all sharp points and blade-wings.  They may be common but they are remarkable birds and I love seeing them.  

February Colours

One thing I have noticed with the snow melting is a gentle resurgence of colour.  The fields are a uniform stubby brown, the trees are still bare, the grass is drab and brown-green.  But with the thin sunshine today these simple end-of-winter colours warmed slightly, they seemed fresher, darker, richer.  The days are noticeably longer, with the dawn at about 7.30 and it staying light until about 5.30.  And there are clumps of snowdrops everywhere, more snowdrops than I have noticed before.  The garden snowdrops have filled out and opened since we saw them poking their heads through frozen snow at the end of January,  and we are starting to notice that the primulas in the garden walls are also spreading their leaves.  But there are still smears of snow on the hills of the Radnor Forest; thin lines of wall-snow and occasional patches in deeper gullies.  

Winter Journeying

Journeys in winter seem more definite, perhaps less casual or spontaneous, even today.  There seems something more deliberate about a journey in short days and difficult weather, even on tarmac roads and in modern cars.  I always try and make the journey about the landscape I am travelling through and not just the traffic or road conditions.  Travelling back from the Lakes I seemed to see a lot of flocks of crows, a lot of bare brown woods, open fields and distant hills. The snow has largely gone, although there were strange sculptural patches - some quite thick - on the Radnor hills, snowfields sculpted by wind and weak sunlight into ellipses and smooth lines, teardrops and irregular lava-lamp blobs.  There was still snow in deep rock gullies.  

And an overnight in Manchester, actually the new world of Salford Quays.  A lit city, even at 4am when the streets are completely deserted.  Windows in the city are covered to keep night light out.  The other thing I noticed was the amount of woodland; every horizon seemed to have a fuzz of empty brown woods, often with black church spires rising from them; Lowry's influence perhaps.  Strange to see this modern city as a place of quiet woods and gaunt churches. 

Grizedale

Milder today after last night's snow and sleet.  We drove over icy roads through Hawkshead to Grizedale Forest and the sculpture park.  Massive changes, new buildings, roads realigned, gates closed.  A good walk along the basic trail, some lovely child-friendly sculpture and wooden musical instruments, a lot of snow in the woods and old ice on the paths.  Grizedale is a special place, we have only explored a small part of it but I love the idea of sculpture and land art being miles away from a road, way out in the dark of the forest or up on the high moors overlooking Coniston.  Sculpture of wood and stone, native materials assembled into something beautiful.  

The Langdale Pikes and the hills around Ambleside are still dusted with snow.  This morning the dawn light touched the Rydal fells with pink sunlight very briefly, like a caress, but it was hesitant and did not last as the sun clouded over.  But whilst it lasted I found it breathtakingly beautiful.  

Early Dusk

The day darkened early with the snow.  After an afternoon of reading and thinking and watching the snow fall, we went into Ambleside at four o'clock.  The town is made of slate and white walls and slate roofs; grey walls of slate 'bricks' and a soft golden glow from early lamps lit against the gloom.  We found Kurt Schwitters' grave in Ambleside parish church, a simple slab crisply carved. His body was reclaimed by the German government some years ago, but the thought of him living and working in Elterwater - and visiting the cinema in Ambleside, I learned today - made his domestic life accessible, even immediate.  Some essential shopping in a half-empty town and then home through the snow gloom.  A beautiful, motionless cloud over Windermere; not a breath of wind.  

Elterwater, Tilberthwaite

The hills are hidden behind a mist of falling snow.  The valley below the house is heavily wooded and the snow is falling through bare trunks onto the ground; beautiful.   This morning we drove up Langdale to Elterwater to see Kurt Schwitters' famous barn.  But the wooden gates were firmly locked and the whole place was closed.  The barn is in a wood which has very limited views of the great landscape of valley and steep fells beyond; a place for introspection not absorption.  The gates were turquoise blue, bleached and scuffed, a landscape work in themselves, secured by great iron hinges to great slabs of stone.  Were they old enough to be there when he was there, I wonder?  And across the road was a timeshare/country club/restaurant complex; the smart cars stared at two art pilgrims and their filthy car as we peered over the wall.  But with a small child our days of scrambling over walls are over.  

A narrow lane off the Coniston road took us up into Tilberthwaite, a narrow, twisting valley with one road in/out and a rocky river.  Steep hills dotted with indifferent sheep.  The valley broadened after a mile or so and the river ran beneath a modern stone bridge.  In the valley floor was a sheep fold by Andy Goldsworthy, a large square space enclosed by a dry stone wall. He had inserted four slate panels into the walls, each with a moon-eye of slate within it.  The effect was simple, dramatic and strong.  It was cold in Tilberthwaite and as we drove out of the valley it started to snow.  

Rocks and Snow

A journal within a journal.  We are staying on Lake Windermere for a working holiday.  Came up on Monday via an icy Clitheroe Castle (where Justine and I have designed a new well-head, incorporating a poem of mine) and then to Kendal and Windermere on A-roads.  I spent yesterday morning at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, researching Wordsworth and his family in Radnorshire; strange to be so far north and gently turning letters franked in Kington or Radnor two centuries ago.  

The cottage overlooks Windermere and Ambleside and the hills and fells above the lake.  The Rydal fells, Scandale and the Langdale Pikes are all covered in a snow like icing sugar on a chocolate cake.  The heavy snow at this level has gone but the nights are still cold and small pockets survive; wall-snow, hiding from the low sunlight behind dry stone walls.  

These last two days have been dominated by sheep.  The cottage is surrounded by fields of Herdwicks - they were nuzzling the car as we unpacked - and we can hear the shepherd on his quad bike.  Last night he was still filling feeding troughs long after dark.  The cold smells   of snow and mud and sheep shit.  Justine has installed a second 'sheep line' installation at the Wordsworth Trust and we walked up to the Heaton Cooper gallery to see the shepherd sculpture, for some reason hidden near the bins and being colonised by a hydrangea.  We hope to see some of the Andy Goldsworthy sheep folds while we are here.  

For the moment we are reading and writing and watching the patches of sunlight move across the brown fells.  I love it here.

A Winter Journey

A cold journey north through snow hills; A44, A483, A55, motorways.  A border journey, in and out of Wales, England.  Colour returns to the landscape, greens reappear, fuzzy browns.  And an urban landscape grows around us, fields disappear, lights and tarmac and snow-hidden buildings. And the dock at Salford, lights and warmth and a modern, urban landscape.  

Mouse

This morning I found a wood mouse in the kitchen.  Bigger than a house mouse, with a cream belly and a longer tail.  No fear at all, he sat and stared at me and only ran when I tried to catch him.  He eventually slipped away between some of the units.  I assume he has come inside because of the cold, as neighbours told us that they have wood mice living in the dry stone walls outside.  

Then this afternoon, sorting boxes in the garden studio, we heard a flock of long-tailed tits attack the bird feeders.  An excited chattering, a flurry of birds from feeder to bush to perch, and they were gone.  Hopefully now they know there is food here they will come back.  

More snow overnight, just a light dry fall.  A clear moon to start with, the stars pale in comparison.  Great moonlit views across the valley, a speckling of village lights against the blue snowlight.  

Snowlight

A bitingly cold day, but sunny and some beautiful views across to the snowbound Radnor Forest.  Another couple of inches of snow last night so we woke to a smooth white world, with the house full once more of reflected snow light.  I have this strange desire to document such unusual/extreme weathers, as if the experience can be captured in some way; but all I am left with is photographs of sunshine and snowy hills.  And we have felt oddly trapped by the snow; we are not snowed in any more but it stops normal outdoor activity.  But it is very beautiful. 

February

We are moved and so we are living in a madness of boxes and books and clothes and dismantlings; but slowly we are getting on top of things.  It is strange, the things that do not appear.  

It snowed a lot two days ago and is snowing again now.  I can see up the old drovers' road into the beech woods, the steep hill covered in snow, the trees bare and grey-brown against the ground.  A fine, powdery snow, layer upon layer, until as now it is about five inches thick.

Yesterday I drove to Welshpool on the open A-roads, not risking the high roads over the moors.  Everywhere has had heavy falls of snow.  A lot of field workers out, hauling dried food to the sheep and moving them to safer ground.  The light on the hills out of New Radnor was astonishing, bare smooth slopes of snow with the occasional grazing of more exposed ground where the snow hadn't fully settled.  And a soft grey muddiness to the sky, a sky swollen with snow, until hills and sky are the same colour and horizons disappear.  

Movement

We are in the process of moving, which involves endless trips to the new house and countless boxes of books and clothes.  Mainly books.  The upheaval unsettles me but I have never embraced change; only now do I feel that I have made decisions to get here and that the chaos is worth it!  

Snow showers today and a fine hail at the new house, driving down the valley.  

Another Winter Journey

A long run today up to Liverpool and Freshfield via Ludlow; furniture, oddments, beds.  I noticed birds everywhere, especially flocks of crows - rooks I think - that were tumbling in flight, presumably courting and re-establishing nest sites etc.  I think they call it 'whiffling', a lazy, tumbling free-fall flight; dazzling and unsettling to watch.  I also saw a red kite hunting north of Onibury, flocks of starlings, distant lines of geese. 

Some great views out onto the great Moss near Formby; a flat landscape defined by bare hedges and ditches, distant lines of bare trees.  I had forgotten how much I loved the Moss. 

A grey day, never-quite-lit, a lot of cloud.  Rain on the roads, spray, thorn hedges sprayed creamy-brown by lorries.  I tried to see the journey in terms of fields and woods and birds and not roads and vehicles; but I also found some interesting and unusual place names - Hengoed, Queen's Head, the Wolfshead roundabout.  'Wolf's head' was an old name for an outlaw.  A journey of places aimed for and never reached; Runcorn, Frodsham, Chester, Wrexham, Welshpool, Shrewsbury, Leominster, Ludlow.  

Fields and Hilltops

Another drive over the moors to Welshpool.  Thick mist here when we left and thick seas of it (with only isolated farms and hill tops above the grey) visible from the high point of the road over the hills to Knighton.  But on the moors above Felindre the road was icy and the hills were shrouded in mist - a lovely phrase.  Most of the valley bottoms however were cold and misty and most of the hilltops were open and clear.  A misty day generally, the fields between here and Hereford were empty and looked swept clean, distant hedges and trees ghostly in the mist.  The countryside looked dormant.  

Lumpen Wolf Moon

A turn around the garden before bed. Brilliant moonlight from a lumpy just-past-full moon, swollen and misshapen after the full of a night or so ago. Bright enough to cast clear shadows, and a sky full of sharp stars. A thickish mist over the drop of the hill, the low point of Byton Hand between two hills, a meeting of five roads; hence the name.

I read a story on the Bertie's Cottage blog that the first full moon of January was called a Wolf Moon by medieval people, because the winter had reached the point where the wolves were hungry enough to attack farms in the search for meat.

Raw

Another cold morning, wet and raw but brighter than recent days. I think I prefer bright cold weather to milder grey days. I spent the morning clearing boxes in the garage. lots of boxes of books and art work materials, amazing the stuff we just collect. Every now and then I looked down the valley to the Radnor hills, the western edge of the Radnor Forest. The light changed every time I looked, from clear light on what looked like frost or light snow to a thicker red light and then a soft obscuring cloud. The sunlight on the woods above the house - not on the house for another seven weeks - changed too, a reddish golden light suddenly turning clearer and more silvery. Good views from the garage of a fold in the hills, a small cwm above the valley road, now thickly planted with larch.

Observations

Heavy squalls of rain blowing down the valley, obscuring the far side, lowering the sky; a heavy thick rain-mist hanging over the hills.  The firs climb up into a daytime Alpine gloom.  When the squalls pass the landscape has a glistening, refreshed quality, the greens and browns shiny and bright.  

An armful of beech twigs blown from the tree onto the grass and brought in for kindling; dripping stems, dark blood reds and blacks, curled like claws, drying slowly and paling on the woodburner.  The immediacy of garden uses.  

A Lost Weekend

Suddenly realised I haven't blogged since Friday - where did the weekend go?!  My weekends seem taken up by many small things; stories from neighbours, conversations at the garden gate, trips to the recycling depot, walks through Presteigne.  We also managed to bake a cake.

After the sharp frosts of the fortnight after Christmas, the weather has turned wet and raw.  It is not cold but a wind has risen, a wet breeze or a breeze over wet ground, which is cold and penetrating in a way that the subzero weather was not.  Strange to see the rain; it woke us in the early hours this morning, hammering on the roof and upsetting the dog; a grey wet light through the skylight, rain pattering down the chimney.  The rain has restored the green-ness to the landscape; moss, grass, evergreen branches.    

Hereford and Kington

Milder again today - generally, that is, not here, where the temperature now is about minus 6 - but in Hereford this morning it was appreciably milder.  The sun has no warmth, though; out of the sunshine next to the superstore the wind was thin and the air was still cold.  Some spectacular views of the cathedral across rooftops and roads, the air somehow thick, creamy-red in colour, sluggish again.  

Hereford has had some icy times recently and at one point in the last week the Wye froze over, a strangely medieval weather event; reminiscent of ox-roasts, frost fairs, bridges encased in ice.  And the recession has closed shops too - there are recent gaps in the shopfronts.  I was surprised to read that Wedgewood has gone under after 200 or so years; I read recently that a gift from two of the Wedgewood brothers in the 1820s allowed Coleridge to write without working elsewhere.  

To Kington briefly in a cold dusk, the creamy-red light thickening as the day darkened.  A lot of pheasants on the hill road.  I like Kington, it is a very Georgian town, an 1820s skin over buildings 400 years older. Not Coleridge but Wordsworth had a use for it as the post came here when he stayed locally; and there are still topographical links with the Hartleys, the Earls of Oxford, who rented Kinsham Court to Byron in 1812.   But it is still a rough-and-tumble working town full of junk shops and pubs and traffic.  

Beechthoughts and Mildness

Beechwoods and distant snow; the beechring at Offa's Dyke, January 7th 2009

I could write a lot about beech woods and their landscapes; I love beech trees. That is one reason I have so much fierce love - affection is the wrong word for such an extreme place - for the beechring on the Dyke. The snow was plastered against the trunks in other woods but presumably had nothing to stick to up there. I often think about these visited places when I am warm and cosy, when I am about to fall asleep; a way of reassuring myself of my security, perhaps. I often think I could live in a beech wood.


Milder today after a cold start. With a prolonged cold snap - or indeed high summer temperatures - I become obsessive about checking the temperature, logging it, making it a part of my day. So now it is a degree or two - deliberate imprecision - below freezing but is expected to fall slightly further tonight. At the weekend it is expected to be mild - ie above freezing all the time. It will seem tropical.

Beechwoods and Ice Caverns

Some more images from this morning's journey. The beechring at the junction of roads and ditches, Offa's Dyke and the modern roads. The Dyke and ditch are visible here but are slowly falling back into the landscape. The bare fields beyond were frozen and covered in settled and wind-blown snow. Only under the hedges had it settled any deeper. A familiar image of mine, a landscape framed by bare trees, the view from the woods.

I found a whole ditch of these strange forms alongside the road on the moors. In summer they are waterlogged and edged with reeds, but in this unusually cold weather the ditches are frozen solid and have formed these weird shapes. Crumbling cliffs of basalt-ice forms no more than two inches long, the collapsed pattern of an earlier freezing; a cold poetry, invisible, a ditch of these shapes as long as the moors. And a strange, pregnant, soft grey light, a light expectant with snow.

Snowlight

A frozen world; moorland between Felindre and Dolfor, January 7th 2009

A long drive this morning to Welshpool via Knighton and Newtown. The road between Presteigne and Knighton and then Knighton and Dolfor, just outside Newtown, felt like the roof of the world; isolated, marooned, lonely. Snow on high ground, the white spine of Wales. The road seemed a black ribbon in endless distances of snowfields, white and grey distances delineated and marked by black hedges and bare trees. A beautiful wind break of beech trees, the snow plastered elagantly against their trunks, a frozen waterfall of icicles just off the road, four feet high, too dangerous to stop. I squeezed a few minutes out of the day to walk on the moors above Felindre, my boots crunching on dead dry heather and whipped-icing-sugar patterns of blown snow. The views from the top of the moors were astonishing, a vast and empty landscape, beautiful; the cold was cumulative, nowhere near the minus 9 we had here last night but growing, seductive, subtle. The snow had settled on paths making circles and strange shapes against the brown ground or bare heathers. Up close the ditch-waters had frozen into basalt shapes, miniature Giants' Causeways of ice, forming ice-caverns six inches high. The beech ring on Offa's Dyke seemed almost tame in comparison, but here too the cold crept up through my boots and the wind was keen. The pagan ring was not as eerie, but I was hungry and there were other visitors; I am a selfish walker. Nevertheless the beech trees' bareness against the mottled snow was very beautiful. I could have stayed out all day. And now the temperature has risen to freezing point and snow is threatened; I will get the firewood in.

Twelfth Night

This has been the coldest Christmas I can remember. The temperature hasn't risen much above freezing for nearly a fortnight. Outside at the moment (8pm) it is minus 8 C and hasn't risen to freezing point here for about three days. Frozen snow, white fields and black hedges as far as we could see on the hills above Knighton this morning. And the house is suitably austere for Twelfth Night, with the decorations sorted and boxed and the trees dismantled and ready for the fire. It seems a long time since we were up in the woods collecting firewood and beech branches to decorate. The last of the Christmas feasts for us although we have been back at work for a few days now. Candlelight and bare walls and a large roast vegetable pasta bake to celebrate the visit of the Three Kings.

Herrock Hill

Memorial cairn, Herrock Hill, Radnor valley, January 5th 2009

The first day of working on the Wordsworth project, a first group meeting and some landscape work. We explored the Radnor valley in light snow and cold winds; the ground frozen, the hills snowbound. We climbed Herrock Hill overlooking the valley, a steep pull up for me in slippery new-soles-needed boots and a jarring walk down, but an astonishing winter landscape of whites and greys and silvers way above the valley floor (all browns and shaved greens, snow lying on tilled fields like icing sugar on a cake). The hills ran away as far as we could see, west into Wales, north towards Shropshire, south towards the Black Mountains, and west down the valley towards Presteigne. And all the heights were thickly dusted with snow. I will write the morning up as a landscape writings piece.

The Tenth Day

Today is the tenth day of Christmas, the end of the last weekend of Christmas. Most people will have taken their decorations down by now; ours will stay up until Twelfth Night, 6th January. I read recently that church tradition had people keeping the decorations up until Candlemas at the beginning of February; this sounds like the church recycling an older tradition, the idea of bringing greenery into the house for the darkest months. I once saw 'Christmas' decorations up in Prague in mid-January, perhaps an echo of this tradition.

Sharp drop in temperature last night. It was minus 5 in the courtyard at dusk and then dropped to about minus 8 by the time I went to bed. A sharp cold, I could feel it as soon as I opened the door. Clear, glittering stars. A gothic moon, blade-like, half-full and surrounded by frost-haze, through the bare branches of the beech tree, but my point-and-click digital camera wasn't up to recording it.

Bright and Cold

Patina of frost on a bin bag, December 2008

A small thaw yesterday and suddenly the white world disappeared. The trees lost their brushing of frost and powder snow and we could see brown and grey trees all the way up the hill. At 0C it felt almost warm. Then the skies cleared and the temperature dropped again. A bright sunny day, the first sunshine for a week or more, brilliant and clear; suddenly our horizons broadened and we could see much further. Cold and clear overnight, another dip to minus 3. And so this morning was bright and cold, the frost returned, the powder snow still lying on the frozen water buckets. Winter as it should be.

With no direct sunlight on the cottage the frost stays longer and the house feels lit from below the horizon, as if the sun is just below the skyline. The light on the other side of the valley is heavy and brassy, a red-gold colour, that we have likened before to Welsh gold. The sunlight seems thick, sluggish, cold.

Frosthaze

Wild roses, January 1st 2009

After clearing briefly late yesterday afternoon, the frost mist has returned and with it a fall of light, powdery snow. Once again every branch and twig is frosted and now the ground has a light covering as well. A magical sight, Christmas card perfect, but the light levels are very low with the silver mist and the hills all around here are invisible. Trees stand in layers of grey and black silhouette and only up close is there any colour in the frozen landscape at all. It has been frozen here since Christmas Night, seven nights ago, and the forecast is for night time temperatures to drop still further and daytime ones to hover at around 0C for another few days.

A New Year

The old toll road under Wapley Hill, January 1st 2009

The new year began with a power surge which tripped the system, so we woke to no light and no heat, and subzero temperatures. I lit the fire by candlelight and thought how to provide a hot breakfast before we realised that the power was tripped not cut, so we untripped it and all the lights worked. Candlelight is much warmer than electric light; illuminating darkness not banishing it, as I read recently. There is a part of me that is always disappointed when the electric comes back on.

A bitingly cold day, no warmer than minus 3 and lows of minus 5 this morning. Three inches of ice in the water buckets. But gloriously beautiful, a hazy silver mist over the valley, the dew frozen onto every branch and stem, spider's web and blade of grass. And amazingly quiet. We were up at 8am but the road was quiet all day, with just the occasional car. You could hear the silence. We managed to get out along the old toll road and the only colour was in grass and mud and rose-hips; spurts of blood-red against the prevailing whites and frozen silvers.

'All is quiet on New Year's Day/a world in white/gets underway...' True for once. A Happy New Year to both my readers.