Walk in the snow

2 weekends ago, the snow "paralysed" the East Midlands. I went for an early walk to the nature reserve, with the camera.

This little chappy wasn't too scared

I made it to a high birds' hide. The visibility wasn't great, can you guess the power station from the fog?

And a view of Attenborough village:

The nature reserve centre, with my nordic walking poles - this was a great workout

The ducks were walking on the ice. This little one went first

He was soon followed by his friends

On my way back, the path became strangely wild

This happy snowman was guarding the golf course. Not a soul, all snowed up, quite eerie really!

Click here to access the full set of pictures on flickr

A walk around the nature reserve

We took our mums for a walk around the nature reserve when my mum visited us in October. Nice weather and lots of birds. Click here to see the full set on flickr.

Louise and Margaret:




and Maman:




Here is a view from one of the hides around the nature reserve:




As we walked on the canal path, we came across a very young and friendly dog and its family:




We then got onto a path close to where birds wait for walkers to feed them. We first came across ducks:




And then some geese:




And finally swans:




Maman has a conversation with one of them:




I tried to take pictures of birds in flight. Here's one of my best:




We had a great time an enjoyed tea and cake at the visitor centre.

Our lovely pebble

We have a house bunny called pebble. Here are some pictures in the garden:

Twins!

Edit: We now know they are girls...

Recovering from a stressful week

A good way to avoid being on the road during rush hour and to relieve the stress of last week: climb Tryfan! Never mind the weather.

An hour after parking the car, I was at the top.



Walking down on "heather terasse", I was sheltered from the wind:



As I arrived at "the cannon", a lovely rainbow appeared:



Somehow, it doesn't look the same with the timer:



Strangely, the weather cleared once i'd made it back down!



A good evening stroll, before driving home.

IML "summer" training week

For our hill walking day, we went to the Ogwen valley and climbed the goat track:



In cas you're wondering about the weather, here's a view of the devil's kitchen during a break in the fog:



Shame the movement of the cloud blown down the col is not visible on the picture!

If you think this all looks familiar, maybe it's because you remember this

Ski de rando - Dolomites

4 mois sans nouvelle sur le blog - trop de stress, trop de boulot, la ca va mieux...

En avril, Guigou m'a emmene dans les Dolomites faire du ski de randonnee. Il faisait mauvais, sauf le dernier jour. Notre hote nous emmene faire une journee extraordinaire:



Depart dans la foret



Et quelle foret!


Guigou en plein effort


On rigole moins: les peaux commencent a se decoler. On est sorti de la foret, bientot le col et la premiere descente


Et c'est parti!


Un chien en ski de rando, c'est genial: droit dans la pente...


... ca rassure de la voir courir, pour l'etat de la neige!


On n'est pas rendu: on doit traverser a flan pour rejoindre un autre col


Il faut se battre. Une grosse avalanche a applati la foret, et du coup on doit skier a travers, par dessus, les branches! Les peaux n'ont pas apprecier, les miennes vont bientot lacher...


Voici d'on on vient: le premier col, le couloir que l'on a skie et la traversee de la foret applatie


Et voici le deuxieme col. On va skier la meme face a la monte et a la descente.


Une derniere photo car mes peaux viennent de lacher pour la derniere fois. Plus de toile adhesive, il faut marcher. A pied, j'ai de la neige jusqu'au cuisses!


Le sourire avant la descente. Je vais avoir des crampes aux jambes, donc pas de photos de la descente


Celle ci, je l'ai prise a la monte. On doit skier le couloir, puis la foret et pour finir 1 heure de marche pour rejoindre la route.


Vue de la vallee: Le premier couloir et au milieu, le deuxieme est situe dans l'ombre entre la dent de droite et celle au milieu de la photo

Une superbe journee. Je dois rajouter les noms dont je ne me souviens pas, la trace GPS, corriger les fautes mais apres 3 mois d'attente, il etait temps de montrer les photos!

Les autres photos sont sur flickr. Cliquez ici

mud

Campervan weekend in the Yorkshire Dales. Bit of the problem this morning: with the blinds in the rear windows, I didn't see this pole when reversing out of the field:



I couldn't drive forward as the ground had gone soft overnight and the wheels just kept digging themselves in. I tried with the mats, with stones, just getting deeper.

In the end, I got the snow chains out:



Not much fun. My fingers got nearly as cold as if it had been snow, and a lot dirtier. In fact, it was harder work on mud than it is on snow!



We got out in the end... Not the most glorious first use of the van's snow chains!