Deep Freeze

At the start of the year, a week’s worth of sub zero temperatures accompanied by thick freezing fog transformed the Hampshire countryside around R’s parents. One short stroll in this uncanny landscape has to count as one of the most extraordinary walks I have ever taken anywhere.

The rolling contours of Hampshire’s giant industrially farmed fields still stubbled with the remains of last years crops had become a brittle confection, sugar dusted. Hedgerow branches hung furred with ice, which crackled and popped delicately if you touched it with your tongue.  As we set off a flock of fieldfares whirled like bonfire ash, gleaning the frozen ground.

Visibility shifted – from ten yards to fifty then back to ten. At times the silent world rolled under my feet as would a treadmill, the landscape ahead not just invisible but wholly absent.

The bold silhouettes of my companions, sharp as cardboard cut-outs, faded to grainy photocopies then neatly dissolved into the white.  All landmarks obliterated, the hard crackling ground under my feet became the only certain thing.

An occasional game crop – sunflowers or corn (left standing as fodder for Hampshire’s vast population of doomed pheasants) lent the landscape an almost apocalyptic air, frozen flower heads bent under rimes of frost an inch or more thick.  For a moment I could picture refugees pouring through devastated frozen fields should a failing Gulf Stream plunge Britain into another ice age.

Crossing the empty fields felt like crossing a fog bound ocean, landmarks islanded in whiteness and fading in and out like ghosts. A spinney loomed out of the ground like a surfacing leviathan.

At our approach individual trees picked themselves out delicately in a lacy monochrome, sugared and perfect. Passing its edge the spinney now took on the aspect of a snow globe, and we the tiny people in it. A short detour among the trees revealed a world in negative – silver branches against a darker sky. White, silver, platinum, all in finer calibrations than you would ever suspect a human eye could see and way beyond the capabilities of my camera or my prose. Apart from the fieldfares at the beginning of our walk we didn’t see another moving thing, and the hedgerows were uncannily silent.

The fog began to clear, revealing a cheerless wintry sun hung in an opalescent sky. Colour seeped gently back into the landscape. At the end of our walk I paused to admire the sky while my small companion excitedly explained the complex world of Harry Potter. Everyone else seemed in a rush to get into the car, and I can’t blame them, but the sunset had me rooted to the spot.

To see the first set of my cold weather pictures, take a look at the previous blog post Through The Wardrobe. There will be more cold weather pictures soon!

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