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Posted on 15/03/21 in Landscape and Nature, Other
The Winter that Was
Here in the Cairngorms, Winter has put on quite the show. I know it might not be over. There is probably more snow and ice to come – especially on the mountain tops – but as Spring makes her entrance and tries to usher old Winter offstage, I wanted to catch him in the wings and say thanks. You were amazing, dahling. Unforgettable.
There are rumours that the temperatures dropped to -20 celsius one night. Certainly, it stayed cold for weeks and the lochs in the valley froze over, with people walking, skating, ski-ing and cycling across them. Swimmers hacked through the ice to take dips and I even joined them: once on New Year’s Day, once in February, and once on International Women’s Day last week, when the ice was melted and it sounded for all the world like the ducks were laughing at me.
So, here are some stills from Winter’s glorious run at the Cairngorms theatre. I hope you will enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed living them. And for the story of a magical paddle across Loch Insh, just days before it started freezing, have a look at Winter Canoe.
Looking to Braeriach from Sgor Gaoith, the Windy Peak 
Winter berries 
Ice formations in a mountain burn 
A hill called An Suidhe 
The island in Loch Insh 
From fields and forest to the Cairngorms 
Frosted boulders on a Cairngorms ridge
On Carn Ban Mor, looking across to Braeriach 
Scimitars of ice 
The Wolf of Badenoch’s castle on a frozen Loch an Eilein 
Highlanders gather in defiant flouting of lockdown regulations 
Looking across the Uath Lochans to the Cairngorms 
A frozen puddle 
On Geal Charn, Monadhliaths 
A pattern of crystals on a seam of snow 
On Loch Insh, Cairngorms behind
A watery Loch Insh 
Woodland mushrooms 
Cracked plates of ice 
Laggan valley from Creag Dubh 
Glaze ice on stalks of grass
Lantern Waste, Narnia 
A winter slope 
Frozen marshland 
Melted droplets on Scots Pine 
Across the Spey to the Cairngorms 
Walking on Water – Loch an Eilein 
Sunset
The coming of Spring also means the launch of my Cairngorms novel, Of Stone and Sky, which is incredibly exciting. (For me, anyway.) Keep May 6th free to join us for the launch (time to be confirmed.) It will be digital, which I know is tough on all of us already utterly Zoomed out, but it does mean more folks can attend AND, fear not, we have lots of fun things up our sleeves. In the meantime, follow the series of Signs in the novel on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
Till then, do share with me some of your magical Winter moments – or Summer ones, for those in the southern hemisphere! It’s a beautiful world.