Eynsham under snow

Posted on | January 6, 2010 | No Comments

My village of Eynsham in west Oxfordshire rarely gets snow. But yesterday it began to fall about 4o’clock in the afternoon and continued to fall for the next 12 hours. I went out about midnight last night to see what was going on. The view down the Pug Lane alley at the back of our house looked so pretty:

And Mill Street looked beautiful with three inches of snow:

The Bartholomew Room in the Square still had its Christmas lights on:

At the village Post Office all was quiet:

This morning nearly eight inches of snow lay on the ground.

I haven’t seen snow where I live so deep since the winter of 1981. I went for a quick potter round the village. The roads hadn’t been treated and there were no buses:

My favourite shop in the world was open for business:

The snow had settled very picturesquely on the church tower and porch:

I trudged down towards to the tollbridge to see if any traffic was getting through anywhere. But judging by the tracks, only a few cars had braved the elements:

Down by the Thames, the snow lay deep on the branches making everything look like a Japanese print by Hokusai:

I was fascinated with the birds I saw; a dozen long-tailed tits flitting, a goldfinch singing by the Wharf stream, and best of all, perhaps 30 redwings plucking berries from a tree. Here’s one I managed to get quite close to:

They were suddenly startled by a hungry sparrowhawk – I saw his unmistakable silhouette swoop over me against the white sky.