Brits and the Weather

Brits are known for forever pontificating about the weather, and it is not until you leave our unpredictable climate that you realise what a gift our weather is.

In Sri Lanka, the year-round temperature is stuck at about 31. There are no seasons. No autumn. No spring. No season of rebirth after the winter. No change in day length. It is warm, luxuriant and there’s lot’s to love but it is so predictable. All that changes is the humidity, and the number of showers you need each day.

Autumn in Sussex

On one of many drives between Embilipitiya (our then home) and Colombo I noticed that the rubber plantation was changing into glorious rusty autumn colour. The vision made me weepy and yearning for home.

The delight of England’s changeability is that familiar scenes are seen anew. Summiting the chalk highlands at Wandlebury, there was a suggestion of dawn ahead – a subtle yellowing between streaks of black cloud and naked trees before a navy sky. On down through the last of Cambridgeshire and into Essex. The ex-marshes at Dartford have never looked as lovely as last Sunday morning. The industrialised hinterland of Tilbury Docks and Bluewater are concreted into submission and even the slight chalky undulations and hillocks are quarried to nasty open wounds.

That morning though the sun rose on a patchwork of fields painted in muted purples and grey-greens. Soft undulating mists highlighted hedgerows I’d never noticed before and disguised ugly buildings that would have been blots on the horizon. It was easy to see small patches of nature that shelter the Dartford warbler and other small cute wildlife.

Passages in Conrad's Heart of Darkness (first published way back in 1902) catch the mysterious but ever-changing atmosphere of the Thames Estuary: "the mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises... and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds."
and at the end of the book...
[The Thames] "was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky - seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness."

We drove on, over the Thames all busy and twinkling with tiny lights and finally to Gatwick and a long-promised trip to the Polar North.

Oslo Airport - waiting to go north

Looking out at the snow falling in Oslo

 

English wildlife

I've been out on the Cam a lot recently - rowing - in the lead up to the annual 'bumping' races. I love the glimpses we get of our wildlife during these several-times-a-week outings. Last night on the stretch of river that passes underneath the busy A14 trunk road, I caught the silhouette of a hunter... flat-faced profile, absolutely silent flight... clearly working the rough ground at the road edges and the embankment for the bridge. The barn owl rose up effortlessly and glided across the setting sun, to plunge into scrubby vegetation and out of sight -- before our cox noticed I wasn't concentrating.

About a week ago we were turning our 'eight' around down by Bait's Bite Lock while mallards laughed at our ineptitude. Movement drew my attention to a very different river-user. Their numbers are in decline in Britain partly because so many of Britain’s rivers are being trained and contained with concrete. I'd already guessed though that there must be a reasonable population of them locally because in several stretches of the river -- in the jungly area opposite the Cambridge Museum of Technology and also along the water meadows near Fen Ditton -- the river bank is pock-marked with their burrows.

The evening sun made his fur look an attractive chestnut-colour, despite a recent dunking in a turbid, fast-flowing river. He had a rounded face that made him look so much more handsome that other rodents, and I could see why friends with a passion for conservation feel it is worth fighting to conserve these water voles. He was shy and soon bolted for cover but it was a lovely encounter, even if this time I earned a stern -- if deserved -- reprimand from our cox for allowing my attention to wander outside the boat. It is fortunate someone was concentrating. We were broadside to the flow. We weren't far from the lock, the river was in spate and we wouldn't have been the first eight to get into trouble by being washed onto the weir.