Brean Down

Whenever I see blue skies overhead my thoughts always drift towards the seaside, even on a cold January day like today. I'm sure it must be more a cultural than a personal thing - a product of the Famous Five and other books I read as a youngster, perhaps, rather than the occasional holidays of my childhood, which I seem to remember being predominantly grey and somewhat damp.

Weston-super-Mare from Brean Down.

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Combs Reservoir

There's something magical about waking to blue skies and a scintillating blanket of snow. You sense the transformation of the world outdoors even before you've drawn back the curtain or pulled up the blind. The light that steals below and around the edges has a quite different quality, brighter with a bluish tinge.

The snow we got at the start of December had been drifting down on-and-off for several days before Monday morning burst into cloudless, sun-shining life for us. It had fallen from wind-wracked, iron-skies over the weekend though, making house lights a necessity throughout the day and not just at its margins. It wasn't the sort of weather to tempt you outside, even if you weren't nursing a cold and sore throat, as I had been.

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