Sunday 3rd February

This morning (yesterday for you) I was at Walton.  It had rained in the night and as I looked out of the window in the morning it seemed to be brightening up a bit.  About eight I got the dogs leads on and out we ventured to the beach.  The sky was quite bright really and there wasn’t a touch of breeze in the air.  It is only a short walk to the beach, and yet by the time we had descended the twenty or so sea-washed concrete steps the mood had changed.  There was a dark cloud approaching rapidly from the North.  The sun comes out directly over the sea here and for a while it was startlingly beautiful.  The contrast between the bright shining sun out to the East and this dark menacing brooding mass of almost black cloud was amazing.  The pier was silhouetted black against the bright light and all the time this cloud of darkness was growing and spreading over us.

There were tendrils of cloud reaching to the sea and within minutes they were reaching down to us too.  A few drops of rain and then sleet and then big fluffy flakes of snow.  Within seconds it was like being inside a blizzard, no sign of the sun anywhere now at all.  We plodded on regardless, heads to the now quite blustery breeze, the dogs coats being streamlined in the snow.   We almost made it to the pier before I decided enough was enough.  I was getting colder and I could feel the snow through my shoes and my coat was getting soaked.  Luckily my faithful waterproof hat from the market in Duras was keeping my head dry, but my glasses were steaming up from my own breath.

We headed for home.  We had been out for only fifteen minutes and it felt as if night-time had descended.  Within minutes we were back in the warm, and as I took off my wet coat and shoes and looked out I saw that the snow had stopped, and was that a hint, a touch of blue sky over to the west.  Within five minutes the sun was out again and that monster of a black snow-cloud had moved right out to sea; and no-one waking then would ever have known that it had been snowing really heavily on the beach only a few minutes ago.