My mum always used to say that if it hadn’t snowed by her birthday then it probably wouldn’t. In 2018 it had certainly snowed by her birthday and continued to snow long after.
In January Sam and I had a fantastic day out on Blencathra playing about on Sharp Edge and Hall’s Fell with crampons and ice axes. Good learning for Sam and fun for me passing some skills on and reminding myself how much fun snowy mountains can be.
The highlight of the ‘Beast from the East’ for me was the Wednesday when only three of us made it in to work. Amusingly two of us were the ones with furthest to travel and lots of the more local staff couldn’t get in. We just took it in turns to see the patients who’d made it in – I saw one chap who’d spent a fair bit of his working life with the British Antarctic Survey and who was quite unfazed. I normally cycle into the Dental Hospital and this day I’d taken my mountain bike expecting difficult conditions. In fact it was great, the roads were almost deserted and the wind had actually blown the snow off the path over the town moor so that was easy enough.
On Wednesday evenings Nick and I usually meet up for a run and we didn’t see why a bit of snow should stop us. The evening was beautiful, a full moon and snow cover meant we didn’t need headtorches and the light over Prudhoe and down the Tyne Valley was spectacular.
We both had exciting journeys home – Nick was caught in a white-out that had him with his head out of the window looking for the edge of the A1 – I was concerned about the articulated lorries who didn’t seem to care that the A69 was essentially down to one lane and insisted on careering past. When I got home the wind had already started drifting the snow in our back lane but I managed to bounce down with my front spoiler snow-ploughing a path for me. What a day!
More ice axe action with Dunmail playing in the drifts on Hadrian’s Wall too.
By Easter Monday it’d lost its novelty though and in desperation Sam and I went out for a run in Slaley forest, longing for spring and dreaming of a long hot summer….
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