Snow

Our family enjoyed the recent snow as much as we could, though the children wished for more than the scant millimetres that covered our city.  On one of my regular site visits, I drove past the Marlborough Downs, a day or two after the snow fall.  Most of the snow had gone, except for north facing pockets and depressions high on the hills. Here the snow revealed subtle landforms that are normally too small to be seen from a distance.  I saw paths, plough lines, ancient hill forts, ditches and strip lynchets.  A day or so later, all the snow had melted and the downs returned to the grey green of winter grass.

Snow also reveals other things in the landscape.  A few days after passing the Downs, we headed to Norfolk for a winter holiday. As we drove east along the M4 and on to the M25, the snow fields re-appeared and we drove through a magical wintery landscape under a bright blue sky.  As we reached Essex, we noticed more and more wildlife in the fields, including many hares and partridges, silhouetted against the snow.  At Wangford Warren I spotted hundreds of rabbits in a single white field.  But on the way home a week later, the snow had melted and I failed to spot a single hare or rabbit along the same route.  The brown soil in ploughed fields and olive green of wintery grasslands provide perfect hiding places.