Snow, snow , snow!

For the first time in fifteen years I have had a course cancelled due to weather. It feels really strange. Not least because it's Saturday and I don't quite know what to do with myself as I am habitually working, lecturing, on a Saturday.

So I thought I would blog about the snow.

Snow is something I grew up with. Being born in Yorkshire and living in the hills as so to speak winters were always full of snow. I remember being that cheeky chappy earning 50p a time for digging out cars when I was a mere child, I remember watching drivers with rear wheel drive cars trying to hill climb up what was effectively an ice sheet outside my childhood home and I remember walking miles in the snow to school because in those days we didn't shut schools at the first fall of a flake!

Then as I grew older and was involved in hill walking and mountaineering snow became more testing, more of a challenge. It was fun building igloos to sleep in to see off the worst of the mountain blizzards. I have to say igloos can be quite cosy and homely if you approach them with the right attitude.

Learning to ski in the Jura Mountains of France was fun and I loved the time I would spend in Davos, especially just before Christmas. Watching my children learn to ski in St Sorlin d'Arves was pretty special too. However riding husky sleds in the Arctic certainly tops it all off. If you've never been inside the Arctic circle folks I can highly recommend it as the air is so fresh and for a guy with only 30% lung function I felt I could actually breathe for the first time in a long time up there.

So what about today. Well living now in the South of the UK I find it a real laugh when snow falls. It's like people are living in an alien world. I went out to the supermarket yesterday and it looked like people had been panic buying. It's 10cm not the Day after Tomorrow!

Anyway just be careful out there and remember Have Fun