A touch of the white stuff!

Drove up through our neighbouring village this morning for our walk and hit the snow line! Not much but enough to make it slippery and give a crunchy white topping to the muddy fields and paths.

Our walk started in Harecroft near this familiar Viaduct which rose54 and her husband walked across to join us and reported it was slick with black ice.

We set off to climb up the field famed for it's gate buried in Himalayan Balsam in the summer. Not there now of course but a calf deep pile of leaves and stems sprinkled with snow made it hard to open the kissing gate (the second gate problem the first having been tied up with baler twine by the farmer!)

This was but the start of our troubles - the next field had three horses and we had three dogs! I've never been worried by traversing fields with live stock but one of these horses took an exception to the dogs which were all on leads. It reared and kicked so two of the dogs were loosed and they and four of us got through and out into the lane. Unfortunately Wilsden Walker (whose scared of horses) and Buster plus rose54 were left behind. We tried lots of distraction tactics and she asked the farmer (who was stood watching) if they could go through his yard. He said no that was the footpath we and the horses were on. Eventually he came to the gate with a bucket of feed to shake to move the horses away so they could get through! Phew! Won't be doing that one again for a while!

Did a circuit down to Wilsden and up Wilsden Hill which gave us this panoramic view. There was a bit of sleet coming down when we set off but as you can see the sun was full out as we returned, melting off some of the snow but there is quite a lot to be seen on the distant moors.

Quite an eventful and invigorating Saturday morning walk!

Staying in the warm for the rest of the day!

Extra - just after the horse debacle you can see M is determined to win her bet and is still wearing shorts!