Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Beats rain

Gee, it looked cold on TV at Kempton this afternoon/evening.  Mind you, it looked cold today here too, and it was.  But again it's proper frost, so the air is dry and still, and that's just lovely.  And, unlike yesterday, we could see where we were going because we didn't have fog.  They had it at Kempton instead, and the on TV one could hardly see a horse during the floodlit races after dusk.  But overall this weather is just a pleasure.

I didn't take a camera with me first lot because there's no point as repeated experiments have conclusively proved that taking photographs in the dark doesn't work.  Well, I suppose it can work, but it doesn't work with the kind of camera which you can carry around in your pocket.  But, even knowing that there would be no point in trying to capture the images which I was seeing, I was still wishing that I had my camera, because it was really lovely, a proper white winter wonderland.

Everything was white.  The trees in particular: so much moisture had collected on the bare branches and twigs during yesterday's fog, and this was all ice, so the trees looked lovely, standing out even in the dark.  The trees lit up by the street lights on the Bury Road crossing from the Severals onto the Heath looked really special - but, again, I know that, even if I'd had my camera, I still wouldn't have got any worthwhile photographs at that time of day.

I was riding a grey horse at the time, but she's a dark grey (ie not Roy - this was Gift Of Silence) so when I was riding around Side Hill in the almost-dark, everything I could sort-of see - ground, air and trees - was white, except for the horse's neck stretching out in front of me, which looked black.  It was just really, really nice, especially as she's a lovely horse to ride anyway.  So no pictures of that - but I had my camera for the subsequent lots, as you can see.

The nice thing was that, despite the sun, the temperatures stayed low, so we had lovely ice-bound trees down at the bottom of Railway Land even come 11.00 am.  It may look cold, and it was cold, but it was glorious.  We're so lucky in that the hard-working Heathmen make sure the Heath is usable, so there are no worries there.  And it's far better than rain, so we can just go out and enjoy the conditions.  Long may it last - except that it won't, because it's forecast to rain on Friday.  Unbelievable.

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