Flooded Field, Brathens

The minor road below the farmhouse at Brathens had been closed by flooding over the Christmas period, and the cold snap last night had then caused the top layer of floodwater to freeze.

By around 8:30 this morning, the water level had dropped, freeing the road but also leaving sheets of ice some 8-10mm thick draped over fenceposts, wires and tussocks of grass along the edge of the road and in the still-flooded fields to either side.

As I got out of the car to investigate and take photographs, I was startled by a loud crash - which I soon realised was one of these sheets of ice, left high and not-so-dry by the receding floodwater, now cracking under its own weight as it lay straddled across a line of barbed wire.