Up North

We've been in Yorkshire for the last week or so to join in big brother's golden wedding celebrations. A VERY long time ago he was a cherubic-looking, curly-haired child and was jolly lucky not to be lumbered with the nickname 'Bubbles'!

The curls didn't last long, however, and he soon became your typical English schoolboy; rumpled socks, scuffed plimsolls, school cap at a jaunty angle. (And, yes folks, I could sit on the end of my very long pigtails!)

We left the South-West in bright sunshine and it stayed with us until it was time to turn off the motorway in North Yorkshire. Was that a bit of sleet? No, it was rather a lot of proper weather!

This was the view when I opened the bedroom curtains the following morning.

We managed a few short walks when the sun briefly shone, looking up to the head of the dale to check the incoming weather and misjudging the speed at which the next great snow flurry would come rolling in!

We turned round at the gate and our backs were layered with wind-blown powdered snow long before we reached home.

It wasn't cold enough to freeze the little waterfall

and by the end of the week the snow had gone. The only white to be seen in my garden and by the beck side came from the snowdrops.

There was a good amount of water in the beck from all the snow melt.

Ee, it wor grand!