Winter arrives

Winter has well and truly arrived here. The snow is several inches thick and last night ice flowers formed on my bedroom window. The sky was that brilliant Czech winter blue today and the sun was warm - so warm that I was glad I took this photograph of the window ice when I did, because it soon melted.

I apologise for this brief post - I have hurt the muscles in my right wrist, so typing is both painful and a problem. Let's hope normal service can resume quickly.

Snow, ice and yaktrax

This is what I woke to yesterday. This is the view from my window. It had started snowing again late on Friday afternoon and continued to lunchtime. I decided I would walk to the bus through the winter landscape and enjoy the snow whilst it was soft and pristine. All very poetic.

But my relationship with Czech snow and ice is a somewhat fraught one. You will have seen in previous posts how much I love the snow here; it is in my opinion in a different class to the British version – dryer, finer, crisper. Ice and compacted snow however is a different matter.

Whichever way I approach my home I am required to go up hill. Two roads enter the village and neither of them are ever gritted. The passage of cars and the snowplough turn my lovely crunchy snow to ice in a matter of a few days. I probably should buy myself a sledge and slide down to the station, but I would still have to haul it back up the slippery slope.

Whilst in England on the recommendation of my osteopath I bought myself some Yaktrax. This incredible invention is probably best described as snow chains for shoes and the difference it makes is remarkable. They have one, rather major, drawback – they should not be worn on gravel or tarmac. When the snow thaws on my roads, which this year it has been doing off and on a lot, I am faced with expanses of bare road and patches of ice. I tried leaving the Yaktrax on and had the alarming experience of the metal springs actually sparking on the granite grave. And so I leave them off and try to avoid ice patches.

A week or so ago I walked down to the station on just such a day of thaw, I had done well. And I turned off the road on to the concrete path to the station. It was covered with black puddles and I walked confidently on looking at my goal. Suddenly my legs just slid out from under me and I landed on my side in an inch of icy water. Unsteadily and somewhat painfully I made my way across what I now realised was black ice to the station, only to discover that I had misread the timetable and I had a further forty minutes to wait on the cold platform in my wet clothes.

I am beginning to think, that like all the other villagers, I should get a car.These romantic walks in the snow are all very well, but I'm a fifty-year old woman with a back to think about

Diamonds in the Snow

I keep writing about diamonds in the snow in the Czech Republic and my British friends and family nod and say "Yes, how lovely". But until you've seen them, I don't think you really can know how remarkable these ice formations are. Even in the recent snowy British winters I have not seen anything like them. They are not just the occasional flash of light against pristine winter snow. They are large crystals that grow in formation as the result of a succession sunny days followed by bitterly cold nights. The UK just doesn't get that sort of weather - a couple of bright days if we are lucky, before the grey presses in once more.

They are inevitably not easy to photograph - so my apologies that my efforts here do not do them full justice. But perhaps they might give you, dear reader, a glimmer of the pleasure they bring me.

In Praise of Skipoles

All this talk about the wonder and beauty of snow is all very well (see my previous post) but there are downsides.

The first of these is the peril of snow turning to ice. As regular readers of this blog will know, I live in a small village near the top of a hill and I usually use public transport, which means a thirty minute walk downhill. However in this weather the walk can take at least fifteen minutes more. The reason for this is the local council sends a snowplough up the road to clear the snow - great if you have a car, not so good if you are on shanks's pony. The snow is piled up on the roadsides, too deep to walk on and disguising the ditch! So you end up walking on a road where the snow has been compacted by passing cars and turned to ice. The council is probably right, no one in their right mind walks along that road in the snow, just that mad Brit. I have noticed that sometimes only my footprints can be seen in the snow for days. Gone are the days when I would have found sliding on ice fun, so my thanks to fellow blogger Salamander for lending me her skipoles and making my journey to and from the house feasible and safe. They have transformed my experience and increased my confidence tremendously.

The second peril is when the snow begins to thaw. You will notice Czechs looking up as they walk along the street and then walking in the centre of the road. After a while you will see why, as blocks of compacted snow and even blocks of ice fall from roofs. At times it can be quite funny, but it can have very serious consequences - this year a baby was seriously injured by ice falling on its pram in Prague.

More on Snow & Frost

Czech winter means snow and frost. And one of the most wonderful of its shows is when a freezing fog settles on our little valley and turns everything white. And so it has this week. The water droplets freeze on everything even cobwebs in the woodshed. Then if you are lucky there are few more nights of fog and slowly the ice grows. The trees on our walk to Horice Na Sumave stand like white ghosts in the fog, covered with long needles of white - now an inch long. Crystals get crystals on them. The seedheads of Autumn flower again, but this time with intricate petals of frozen water.

Then a miracle can happen. The sun comes out and suddenly all those ice crystals start to sparkle. In the low shafts of winter sunlight, the water vapour turns to tiny silver specks, dancing in mid-air like the spirits of winter. At such a time and in such a place it is hard not to believe in magic.

Thaw Continued & Czech Driving Machismo

The thaw had the effect of melting the top layer of compacted snow on the roads leading to our village which then rucked up into tracks, below the snow was now ice. I therefore watched in awe as a number of Czech drivers attempted to drive up the hill to the village. It was essential to get enough speed up to keep the momentum going to the top but not too much that you lost control. Some made it, others made it half way and slid back and one drove his car into the pile of snow on the side and abandoned it.

But the prize for Czech driving machismo and bloody-mindedness had to go to the driver of the car who decided to drive to Horice Na Sumave via the little road. This road rises sharply as it goes out of the village and on this stretch is shaded by two lines of trees making the thawing influence of the sun intermittent. It is very narrow, only the width of one car. Add to this at the bottom of the hill as you exit the village there is a 90 degree turn, which means that you cannot get any momentum before you start on the hill. The final point to make is that this road only goes to Horice, which can be reached from our village via a better and easier road which goes downhill, and so any attempt to climb this hill was totally unnecssary.

But one Czech driver thought better. I watched him (I presume it was a him) make several attempts on the hill, the first time he got a third of the way before sliding backwards, the second halfway. He then disappeared for a while. Aha I thought he has realised the errors of his ways and is going the sensible route. Not a bit of it. There he was reversing (yes reversing) up the hill, again he made several attempts, but he did make it eventually. The very idea of attempting driving up that lane in those conditions was enough to make me shudder, but doing it while looking over one's shoulder hardly bears thinking about. Those mad Czech drivers!

Some thoughts on snow

At the moment the British media are full of stories about the disruption caused by the exceptional snowfalls that have beset the UK over the last week. Commentators ask why the British transport system can grind to a virtual halt when other countries cope happily with much more snow. It is, they argue, the fault of government (central and local) to be adequately prepared, a decline in standards among the Brits - slackers who use the excuse of a few inches of snow to bunk off work, health and safety phobia gone mad, what ever happened to the bulldog spirit, blah, blah, blah.

My other country, the Czech Republic, copes with winter snows that last for several months most years. This gives me something of an insight into the situation. It is not true that all the roads here are kept clear of snow, as this photo near my villages shows, far from it - many of the rural roads are neither cleared, gritted nor salted. Such snow clearance as does take place is done by our local farmer, for good commercial reasons. And my observation is that is true of many minor roads in the Czech Republic, you can spot the road used by forestry logging lorries or leading to a factory as they are clear.

Czech cars are obliged by law to have winter tyres fitted every year, which help with driving on snow, but not so much on ice. Whether such a measure would be appropriate in a country such as the UK, which has heavy snow once every 28 years, is questionable. My old creative writing teacher always had snow chains on her tyres in the Winter, but then she lived down a narrow Cotswold lane on a 1-in-4 hill.

On driving in the snow in the UK after driving in the Czech Republic it is pretty obvious to me what the main problem is - namely that British drivers just do not know how to drive in these conditions. They drive too fast or too slow, the latter being as dangerous as the first when attempting to get up a winding steep hill in the Cotswolds. But is it surprising that this is the case? How can they gain such knowledge/experience unless they are sent to the Czech Republic for a few months? That said, a few weeks ago I was standing at the Spicak bus station in Cesky Krumlov when I saw Czech boyracer do a spectacular but unplanned 180-degree spin on the main road - I and the rest of the bus queue gave him a jeering round of applause.

One other thought about why the British have had so many problems this last week - a major cause is I think the British attitude to commuting. When I was a little girl we had the winter of 1963 - a far worse winter than this one. I can still remember it, although I was only four. For weeks my home town was cut off - it is surrounded on three sides by hills. The snow was so deep I have heard tales of people walking to the local papermill on the tops of the hedges. The school stayed open - even though the children's toilets were outside loos, which required the snow being cleared every morning and the ice broken in the toilet bowls (ah yes I remember them well!). But the difference was the teachers would have lived in the town, now they could not afford it. The majority of the population worked in the papermill and other local businesses, now people commute to Cheltenham, Oxford and Birmingham. I believe it is this reliance on being able to travel long distances that has made this year's "snow event" as the Met Office calls it so catastrophic.

I have observed Czechs do not share this willingness to travel for hours just to get to work. Friends in Cesky Krumlov will not consider a job in Ceske Budejovice only 20 minutes away. Is this because of the Czech Winter? I think not, but rather an attitude to work and the work/life balance which thinks an hour's commute even for a better job too much of a sacrifice.

Diamonds in the Snow

Yesterday I went for a walk with my friend Salamander. We took the path up to the woods above my house, the weather was perfect – sun, snow, a clear blue sky, a deep blue I have never seen in England. We are having extremely low temperatures at present -20 degrees last night. It is as they say too cold to snow, the water vapour stays in the air and forms snow-like crystals over everything. On Saturday morning you could even see the ice hanging in the air where the sunlight shafted down, minute crystals would flash in shimmering clouds, a glimpse of the spirits of the Czech winter working their magic. Now we reaped the benefit of their work, we walked through ankle-deep virgin snow, broken only by occasional animal tracks. On the snow's surface flowers of ice crystal bloomed and shone in the sunlight. The branches of the dark firs at the forest edge were picked out by white.


We walked through woods, now bereft of the birdsong which had accompanied my mushrooming forays in the summer and autumn, the only sound being the crunch of the snow and occasional branch crack. Ducking under an electric fence we followed the edge of the forest down a steep slope – in the distance the Klet was bathed in sun, but with a scarf of low cloud around its shoulders. Crossing a frozen stream we regained the path and returned to the house and warm mugs of tea.

As dusk fell Salamander departed and I settled down with a book whilst the woodstove chugged in the corner. Then the phone rang – it was Salamander. “If you can, take a look at the moon.” I walked into the yard at the end of the orchard the moon full hung just above the old apple trees – large and orange. The light was so bright, the orchard was lit up as if in daylight. This morning I left the house at 8am to walk to Horice na Sumave to catch the bus into town. The sun was rising and the sky was coloured. As I walked I watched the sun turn the white snow yellow and the ice on the trees a peach colour. My house stood glowing in the light on the other side of the village. And just to finish off the enchantment across the fields as bold as brass ran my fox. I had not seen him since my return from England at New Year. He looked across the field at me, sniffed the morning air and darted into the cover of the woods. The dawn sun had turned his coat a dark auburn. By the time I got to Horice the world was white again.

Czech winter

Over the last week the area around our home has been transformed. We have had snow followed by a cold several degrees below freezing. As a consequence we have a wonderful winter landscape of bright white together with beautiful blue skies. It has been so cold and still that the water vapour has been unable to form into snow. Instead it crystallises on the branches and the plants and is nothing so like those magnetised iron filings one played with as a child, only white of course. On the ground through a process of slight thaw and then severe freeze the surface of the snow is covered by white feathers of ice, which catch the sunlight and dazzle like diamonds. There is such a magic in these Czech winter days, that it makes your heart leap with joy.

PS I don't usually put up large images on this blog, but have made an exception this time - click the photo to see enlarged version, a view towards Horice na Sumave from the hill above our Czech home.