A thin, ephemeral blanket of white

3 February 2015

On Monday night I made a careful plan for a long walk. Maybe it’s time I learned my lesson and stopped making plans because it seems something always happens to scupper them. When I got up in the night I did a double take as I passed the hall window from bedroom to bathroom, either there was a really heavy frost or it had been snowing. It was too dark to see for sure so, sleepily, I trotted back to bed. The answer, when Tuesday morning came, was snow! Finally the Yak Trax would come out of hibernation. At least they would if I got a move on and got outside before it melted or rained.

While I ate my breakfast, impatient to be outside and worried it would be all gone if I didn’t hurry, I wondered where to walk. The ten miles with a long stretch of footpathless road I’d planned didn’t seem like a good idea. The trouble was I wanted to see everywhere with snow, riverside, the shore, Millers Pond, the Windmill, the old walls, the Navigation. Ok so maybe not the Navigation, that might be taking things too far, with mud under the snow, floods and narrow paths beside the river but still. Making a decision was tough and the more I though the more places I thought of. Why couldn’t I be in several places at the same time?

Just as I was about to go outside it started to snow again and it occurred to me that it might not be as much fun out there as it looked. Plans and ideas were swirling round in my head just like the tiny snowflakes outside. In the end I decided on a walk that would take in several of the places I wanted to see in the snow if my nose didn’t drop off in the attempt. Monday had been bitterly cold all day. The only time I’d felt warm was when we went to Bard’s cozy little flat where the heating from the flats below and above make it toasty all the time. We’d talked about snow because, under the flat steel grey clouds, there were huge billowing cumulus that looked like snow clouds. None of us thought it would really snow though. With the cold in mind I wrapped up in the warmest clothes I had, pulled on a flappy eared hat and my Yak Trax and opened the door.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d expected although the snow was getting heavier and sticking to my glasses and eyelashes. For a moment I stood on the decking looking out at the snowy garden, still half undecided about where to walk. The decking posts wore little white fliffy hats and the cobwebs between the rails were sprinkled with snowflakes. It was tempting to wander around the garden taking pictures of snow covered plants but, if I did that, I’d never get walking so I left them behind and set off up the Little Hill.

Half way up I stopped to take a picture of a camelia flower completely covered with snow. It’s not often you see that after all. Then I carried on to the corner where it gets steep. A neighbour was slowly crawling up there in her car. At the top she stopped and skidded back a little but, after a few heart stopping moments, made it round the top corner. Rather her than me, I feel much safer on my own two feet, especially with the Yak Trax.

Freemantle common was like a Christmas card. In the distance a few people were walking dogs and someone was trying to build a snow man. We probably had an inch of snow at most but, as we rarely get even that much, everyone seemed to be making the most of it. Tempting as it was to crunch across the common I stayed on the path, walking under an archway of snow covered trees.

All along Spring Road, I crunched my way, feeling a little nervous as cars came past at speeds that would have been fine on dry roads but not so much on snow that was quickly turning to icy slush under their tyres.  When I reached Station Road I was glad to turn off and, passing the Millers Pond pub, cross the road and step onto the trail beside the pond. By now the snow had stopped falling and I couldn’t work out if this was a good thing or a bad one.

As the name suggests, this was once a mill pond. The mill was a wood mill, built in 1762 by Walter Taylor and the pond was formed as a reservoir to supply the mill. In the nineteenth century the mill was turned into a private house but, sadly, this was so badly damaged during the Southampton blitz it was abandoned. Behind the cover of thick grey cloud that had, until a few moments before, been dropping snow on me, the sun was trying to burn a way through turning a small circle of grey an eerie gold. The pond, when I reached a point where I could see it, looked to be covered with a thin layer of ice and, on that ice, there were small islands of snow. The ducks were nowhere to be seen but I got the feeling they’d appear as if by magic at the slightest rustling of a bread wrapper.

Round at the main entrance to Millers Pond I stood on a snow covered viewing platform and looked across the frozen water, strewn with small branches and snowballs probably thrown by children on their way to school. Behind me two mothers turned off the road into the park. One had a baby in a carrier strapped to her chest, the other was holding the hand of a very excited child of about three or four.
“I want to make a snow man,” the child squealed, pulling away and skidding along the path in small Wellington boots.
“I don’t think there’s enough snow here,” one mother said but the child bent down and began to gather it anyway. The snow stuck to warm woolen mittens and the child held out its hands, bottom lip quivering slightly.
“It’s cold.”
“Never mind, we’ll be nice and warm when we get indoors.”
As I walked back towards the road and they walked in the opposite direction I smiled to myself, remembering many similar conversations with my boys.

For a moment I’d thought about following them and taking the trail to the windmil but, in the end, I stuck to my plan and walked under the railway arch towards the woods. Crossing the road took longer than I’d hoped but, eventually, I was on the other side where the stream comes out and runs beside the Butterfly Walk. This time, I walked past the gate and up the hill a little way to the high path instead, it seemed like the better choice, even though I don’t know it that well.

The path was steep with snow over a deep layer of fallen leaves but the Yak Tracks made short work of it. It looked like someone had recently cycled this way and I wondered if they had chains on their tyres, if not, they were either very brave or foolhardy. At the top there was a snow covered bench and I could just make out the top of the railway arch through the snow laden branches. To my right the ground fell sharply away and I followed the cycle tracks along the path expecting at any moment to find a cyclist in a tree or halfway down the bank. As I passed, the rhododendrons beside the trail dumped snow on me but, unsurprisingly, there were no flowers to be seen.

In places the leaves were so thick my feet sunk deeply into them and the trail was hard to follow. The cycle tracks were gone or hidden by the leaves. Once before I’ve taken this trail, in summer but from the opposite direction. When it ended in a steep decent down makeshift steps I wasn’t sure I was going in the right direction. The wrought iron twisted vine handrail, dripping gently as the sun warmed it, looked familiar but then they are probably like that all over the park. Even so, I went down to the bottom and stood for a moment or two looking at the weak sun twinkling on the snow.

Ahead was a trail that could end up leading me anywhere, including the way I wanted to go but I knew that, if I climbed the bank, I’d end up on the fields of Mayfield Park and, from there, I knew the way very well. My sister used to live close by and, when they were little, I’d take my nephews to run around on the huge field. The park won and I trudged up the bank where I was almost blinded by the vast expanse of brilliantly shining snow. Across the park the portland stone obelisk caught my attention and I thought about walking over to it. This park was once part of Willaim Chamberlayne’s Weston Grove Estate and the obelisk was built in 1810 as a memorial to politician Charles James Fox. In the end I left the obelisk for another day, I’ve seen it many time before. Instead I strode across the snow towards the Holy Trinity Church, eager to get to my next destination, Weston Shore.