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.