Big (but probably temporary) step forward

It's almost impossible to believe that we were under snow merely five days ago.  The snow went amazingly quickly - overnight Saturday to Sunday, assisted by the heavy overnight rain - but now we seem to be in springtime.  Of course, it's never that easy, and we aren't in spring, with the forecast for the weekend revolving around some or all of rain sleet, snow and frost, but just now it's glorious.

It's very windy and elsewhere they've had strong winds and heavy rain; but we've got strong winds and sunshine, which has done a huge amount to dry the place out (ie it's done about 1% of the drying we need).  So the past couple of nights have been properly stormy, and at 7.00 this morning we were 'enjoying' a spot of driving rain on top of Long Hill in the semi-darkness; but both today and yesterday we had the sky clearing as morning arrived, and we've had a couple of lovely spring days.

As we rode past Green Lodge onto the Severals around 8.40 this morning it could have gone either way, as you can see at the top, but the skies cleared and it was lovely.  You can see the view on Railway Land 10 minutes later - and then on Warren Hill at the end of the morning it was a proper spring day, with the wind not contradicting that assertion, as spring is often a windy season.  You'll spot that the last two photographs were taken by me on foot.  That's because I was out with Barrie Catchpole and Mike Meaney, Grand Liaison's owners, whose previous attempts to visit this month had been thwarted by snow.

Anyway, Barrie and Mike visited today; so that's the filly, our highest achiever of 2012, leading the trio up the canter in the previous paragraph's illustration and then back down the hill in this paragraph's shot. She came back from her holiday four weeks ago so has just resumed having a slow canter this week.  She looks well, as this photograph suggests, as does her contemporary Wasabi who is following her, and that's grand.  It's a lovely time of year as there are several horses in the category which those two fillies are in: returned from their holidays, starting to get fit again, having their work upped week by week, and basically just giving us all something to look forward to.  On a day such as today, spring and the new season doesn't seem too far away.