Morning has broken

Very, very dark this morning for the start of our early, early walk as we are nearly at the shortest day, the winter solstice!
Despite the darkness and cold it was a glorious start to a wonderful bright winter’s day.

Here you can see the sun rising as we walked up through St Ives woods past Lady Blantyre’s Rock and up the path to the head of the golf course.

Light by the time we were crossing the field to the golf club and finally to  Coppice Pond. All the water fowl were there waiting for us. Someone had poured out a huge pile of bird food at the edge of the water. The swans were all gathered round it and despite that huge pile they still wanted more. The poor old ducks were being kept away! (Extra. Now incorporated in the collage.)

It’s stayed fine and sunny all day and I’ve had a wash out on the line and dried. I had something to collect from Guiseley M&S so popped over there and despite shopping in Skipton on Monday we still managed to buy more. That's how it is at Christmas.  Chris will be back on Monday when he goes for his early hair cut and will pick up our Christmas food order,