Snowy Christmas

Yes, I know it was over a month ago - but here's some photos I took in Arran at Christmas.

Sunrise over Holy Isle

It was quite strange actually - when I arrived Holy Isle was all white, but due to the angle of the sun at this time of year, the snow on Holy Isle was nearly all gone within a day while the rest of the village was still white. It felt slightly surreal standing in a white winter wonderland looking out at sunshine and very little snow on Holy Isle.

 Looking towards Goatfell.

 The fisherman's walk - where the going was slightly easier than at this time last year, when we'd have been better wearing ice skates!

 Baby Christmas trees.

I did find it sad, though, that the Foresty Commission found it necessary to have signs prominently displayed about having CCTV in this spot!

I wonder how many places in Scotland have Christmas lights on palm trees?

It's snowing!

Ayr doesn't get much snow at all, so there's great excitement when a little does lie. It's snowing right now .....

... and the river in front of the flat has ice on it again.

Because of the ice the heron hasn't been around for days as that's his usual low tide fishing spot. I haven't even seen the swans or mallards about nearly as much as usual.

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This was the road to the campus on Wednesday:

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We had lovely squeaky snow underfoot that day. Right down here by the shore it's not really lying though - it's pretty much melting when it hits the pavement, although it's lying a wee bit beside the river and on the sand which is covering the road (a result of the winter storms is that the road to the pier has a fair covering of sand now).

Placement

I was at the school I'm going to be spending my next placement at yesterday. It's about 20-25 mins walk, which is great. It seems a realy nice school and I'm really looking forward to my 5 weeks in the P5 class there.

I can talk a small detour on the way there so I can walk along part of the esplanade and enjoy the views of the beach and Arran. It was very cold walking that way yesterday though. We've not had that much snow (more of that in another posting) but it has been cold - enough to make some ice form on the 'dry dock'/offshoot of the harbour in front of the flat.

Arran

I had a lovely weekend in Arran. The was a bit of snow on the hills - as Steven (age 2 1/2) out it: "snow on mountain, not lots of snow, just a little snow".

We spent quite a while on the beach in Lamlash - Steven was having fun building sandcastles, but it was really cold. So after a while I started playing about with my camera - this is the results:

Snow on Arran

It's been very cold for the past few days but lovely - those lovely crisp, autumn days that you don't get much in Orkney. A very pleasant change from all the rain for the previous week! And it means you can scuff through the leaves again - a great novelty for me. The previous week when Kye was here the leaves were all soggy because it rained so much.

There's quite a bit of snow on the Arran hills now.