I somehow doubt if any South Africans who are currently enjoying
the summer heat have any concept of just how cold winter can be here in the
northern hemisphere. I can assure you that it is very, very cold indeed. Over
the last week, temperatures have not risen much above 5 degrees maximum each day and have dropped
to as low as minus 7 at least once. It
hasn’t actually snowed yet although one morning there was a sprinkling of snow
on the window which quickly slid down the pane and melted away. However, we
have been warned that December/January is not the coldest part of winter – the end
of January and February are far colder. Oh dear!
The other day when took a drive to town, we discovered that
the whole landscape had turned into a winter wonderland. All the trees, bushes
and grass were snowy white and the groud was covered with frost. We stopped
next to a creeper that was growing along
the fence and took pictures of the stems that were covered in icicles that
resembled white thorns. After that my camera had a small tantrum and stopped
working so I couldn’t take any further pictures, which was a shame as the countryside
was quite, quite beautiful. So I ‘borrowed’ a couple of Cassidy’s photographs instead.
They are not bad but one can’t really see how stunning it all looked.
Getting washing dried is a mundane topic that one doesn’t
really consider when buying a house, but perhaps we should have done so. Our
washing lines in the garden get no sun at all in winter and the days are so
cold that it wouldn’t really help much to hang anything out there. So we have a
sort of revolving system where washing comes out of the machine and gets hung
on the hanging rails in the cellar, for about twelve hours. From there it moves
up to the steel expanding rack in the dining room which gets moved to in front
of the fire when we go to bed and stays there until the next morning. Anything
that is still not dry will then end up either on the towel heaters in the
bathrooms or on a wooden clothes horse in our room. But with six people in the
house, a fair amount of laundry is generated and most of the time, there is
laundry hanging on all the available spaces. And that doesn’t include changing
bed linen! It sounds as if I am complaining about it all, but that isn’t the
case – our system works well and no-one has had to go naked yet!
On Thursday, Andre Leigh and Cassidy went off to Carcassonne
to fetch Courtney who had been spending a few days with her friend Connie. That
same day, Pieter arrived, with Tilly and her son Jack. Next morning Tilly and Jack
left to go to Tilly’s parents who live further north. And then the rest of the
Ferreiras arrived back from Carcassonne again. Talk about ‘Musical Beds’!!
Pieter left again today, and Andre and Cassidy return to South Africa tomorrow
for the new school term which starts on Wednesday, but then Tilly and Jack return
to us on their way south again, also tomorrow, and will be here until Thursday.
By then we should have more or less returned to normal, I think. I hope!
On Saturday, in spite of the freezing wind, four of the house
guests and Neels went to look at the dolmens which we had found the previous
week, leaving Leigh and myself behind in the warm house. Being more adventurous
than we were initially, they went on to look for more of these amazing relics
of the past and found three more. They are huge and today would require at
least a large fork lift truck or a crane to get the top stones in position, so
one wonders how it was done 4000 years ago. According to a diagram at the site,
the dolmens were erected, then covered with earth and the then top stones were
hauled into place. Even so, it would have taken a lot of muscle. Horses,
perhaps?!
Driving further into the valley they came a across a very
damp area that had not had any sun all day but was oozing water between the
layers of stone and soil, but this had all frozen and formed icicles, almost like
a frozen waterfall. It was a strange sight.
This is what we enjoy though – finding new and strange sights
and discovering hidden parts of the countryside. I think there is plenty more
to still find!
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