It was around this time last year that I mentioned Amazon.co.uk having Julia Bradbury’s “Wainwright Walks” DVDs (2 series from the BBC) on sale at half price.  Just now I was checking for some new Lake District products and spotted that they’re still available this year at that excellent price.

Looking a little further I discovered that Amazon.co.uk are also offering the boxed set of books at more than 50% discount:  Wainwright Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells

This year the English snow has come earlier and thicker than for many years. Here in Nottinghamshire we’ve not seen anything like it all the time we’ve lived here. The Lakeland mountains, however, are accustomed to their winter white clothing, and this has been captured well in a new photographic book Winter in the Lake District by Val Corbett.  This weekend I’m planning to spend a few days experiencing these sights directly on the spot in Cumbria, but if you can’t get there in person this book is a good long-distance alternative.

In previous articles I’ve referred to my love of the River Hodder in Lancashire.  Recently I came across some photographs taken one very snowy Saturday morning in, I think, 1991 (or it may have been 1992). It was a splendidly crisp day, and great to walk where no man had gone before, as it were.  I started by the Hodder itself, and then decided to drive into the Trough of Bowland and walk up by the Langden Brook, one of the smaller streams that feeds the Hodder.  I’d lost the photographs for many years, but have never lost the memory.

The Hodder near Dunsop Bridge (1991?)

Got here before the gritters

Looking down on the Waterworks, Langden Valley, Bowland

I’m the first here – apart from the sheep

The snow is thinner here – but desolate for miles now

As I’ve said before, the Hodder with its villages, and the Trough of Bowland deserve to be much better known – but don’t come in droves will you; I’d like to see it stay peaceful.

As I looked around this morning for something that illustrated the challenges faced by people during this period of unfamiliarly heavy and protracted snowfall in England I came across the following.  It gives a down-to-earth description of the situation for many of the people who produce our food.  The rest of us should be grateful.

From the Lancashire Telegraph

East Lancashire snow: How farmers are coping

Monday, 11th January 2010, By Emma Cruces »

“THE big freeze has left East Lancashire farmers working around the clock to keep their animals fed and watered. ……….”

[And I liked the pragmatic get-on-and-do-it attitude of the closing sentences:] 
” You couldn’t prepare for it, even if you knew, and you couldn’t do anything more. At the end of the day it’s the same for lots of people. You still have to make a shilling, so you get on with it.”

Full article »