A patch of icicles

I passed this clump of bushes at the side of the road and was visually taken by the blue light. There was a frost pocket in the steep sided Toadsmoor valley where the sun never reached and the reflections seemed very blue.

The road was narrow  making it difficult to stop, so I drove on for half a mile, found a turning place and then ventured back. I parked off road nearby and walked  to where the icy bushes were and realised what was causing this phenomena.

The massive amounts of rain recently soaked into the limestone and percolated down under gravity until the met a strata of impermeable clay.  At that point the underground water would be under pressure and would exit the surface at the nearest point where the limestone overlaid the clay and a spring would result, sometimes called a spout locally.

The water ran down into the tarmac and collected in a puddle at the side of the road. Every time a car drove down the narrow road the water from the puddle would spray onto the bushes and in the frozen conditions the icicles would develop.

When I arrived the sun had broken through but its rays were coming from a specific direction and limited by the shape of the hill. The light seemed to refract so various colours would 'appear' in the icy shapes, backlit by the bluish frost on the steep hillside behind. Ten yards either side of these roadside bushes there was no ice on their branches at all. I doubt these conditions will ever recur quite like this again, so I thought I'd blip it for posterity.