Cold, cold, cold. Infill of Cormorant lake continues. 3rd February 2019

No weekend site visit.

I toyed with the idea of visiting the nascent reserve during Friday to photograph the place in snow, but decided to hold off until Saturday. The snow was slushy, which I didn't want in my camera and lens. Also it was expected to be sunny and I would get better shots.

This plan was scuppered, partly as it continued snowing throughout Friday afternoon and into early Saturday morning, which in turn saw my car refusing to go up a small incline (despite having just gone up a very steep incline) when I picked up my daughter at 19:00 on Friday evening. Having crashed at her house, I spent a merry half hour early Saturday morning cutting a path through the slushy, compacted snow on the road; which shouldn't have been there had the snow stopped at 13:00, when the Met office said it would.

Oddly, the snow where we live had virtually disappeared when I set off to pick up my daughter at 19:00, but four miles away it was seven inches deep.  I saw lots of accidents on my journey. The most major was a cohort of police cars at Finchampstead memorial, dealing with a crash and closing off the road.

With temperatures hovering around -8 degrees centigrade this morning (Sunday), I declined to get out of my nice warm bed and shoot down to the reserve at 7:00 am.

Enough of my harping on about a little cold snap. My visit to Manor farm on Wednesday revealed continued infill of Cormorant lake (south).  Activity appears still to be fairly sedate, with a small handful of lorries; though it is difficult to count them all as they keep moving around. :-) :-) :-0

The pump was chugging away, but appears to have a small leak in its outflow pipe. The jet of water fell onto a nearby sapling, instantly freezing and making it look all pretty.

Activity continues unabated on Chandlers farm; which seems mainly to consist of Inert's favourite pastime of building large piles of soil.

With kinder, albeit it wetter, weather arriving tomorrow I expect normal service to resume.