Snow in England

Last winter, England was shut off from the rest of the world for a few days, because of a quite heavy downfall of snow, appearantly the worst in 20 years. And appearantly it was not to be a once-in-a-lifetime either. Around christmas time we had cold periods, and in the week between Christmas and New Years the horses had to stay in. It was snow and ice everywhere, and we couldn't risk the horses going out and slip on the ground. Towards New Years it got better, and we carefully longed the horses before riding and letting them out in the field again.

The day after we got home from Scotland, my employer went on skiing holidays with the family, and left me and Daniel to look to the horses. All fine, but then came the snow again. This time it was a lot more snow, but less icy, so the horses could still get out in the field. Worse was, that the rest of England couldn't seem to get anywhere. It seemed a bit ridiculous to us Norwegians, but of course they don't have the routines and equipment to handle the snow here in England, as is in Norway.

As the cars doesn't have winter tyres, it was hard getting anywhere. Only the main roads were gritted, and everyone were warned not to drive anywhere unless they had to. Well, the horses can't tend to themselves, so I managed to drive as far as to the nearest village, Cuddesdon, and walked to Denton House from there. The roads became very icy, so I didn't take the chance of driving down to Denton House the rest of that week. The horses seemed all right with the snow, and were for once all clean when day got back in the stable in the afternoon, instead of covered in mud.

Another funny aspect was people hoarding milk and bread, and some other food. We didn't bother to, of course, but it lead to the grocers having short supplies of a lot of things, and of course the deliveries were lacking due to the weather, as everything else.

After a good weeks time the snow disappeared again, and things got back to normal. The experts says it's going to be another snowy period like that in February, and people are awaiting, a bit nervous and expectant, to see if it will be so.

Karianne