Back in time for winter

I returned from an English Christmas in time for a Czech Epiphany, from a country suffering from prolonged rain and horrendous floods (although not fortunately in my home town) in time for snow (I hoped). The Czech news had been full of how the temperatures in December been record-breakingly mild, seldom dipping below freezing the whole month. However the weather obligingly broke the day before I arrived, so the plane flew in over snow-covered fields.

In South Bohemia however the mild weather soon melted the scattering of white on the hills. A week or so ago all that changed overnight. I looked out of the window to see this:

It has been snowing ever since. Inside the house the stove is lit and all is warm: the perfect way to enjoy a Czech winter.

Winter arrives

Winter has well and truly arrived here. The snow is several inches thick and last night ice flowers formed on my bedroom window. The sky was that brilliant Czech winter blue today and the sun was warm - so warm that I was glad I took this photograph of the window ice when I did, because it soon melted.

I apologise for this brief post - I have hurt the muscles in my right wrist, so typing is both painful and a problem. Let's hope normal service can resume quickly.

Snow, ice and yaktrax

This is what I woke to yesterday. This is the view from my window. It had started snowing again late on Friday afternoon and continued to lunchtime. I decided I would walk to the bus through the winter landscape and enjoy the snow whilst it was soft and pristine. All very poetic.

But my relationship with Czech snow and ice is a somewhat fraught one. You will have seen in previous posts how much I love the snow here; it is in my opinion in a different class to the British version – dryer, finer, crisper. Ice and compacted snow however is a different matter.

Whichever way I approach my home I am required to go up hill. Two roads enter the village and neither of them are ever gritted. The passage of cars and the snowplough turn my lovely crunchy snow to ice in a matter of a few days. I probably should buy myself a sledge and slide down to the station, but I would still have to haul it back up the slippery slope.

Whilst in England on the recommendation of my osteopath I bought myself some Yaktrax. This incredible invention is probably best described as snow chains for shoes and the difference it makes is remarkable. They have one, rather major, drawback – they should not be worn on gravel or tarmac. When the snow thaws on my roads, which this year it has been doing off and on a lot, I am faced with expanses of bare road and patches of ice. I tried leaving the Yaktrax on and had the alarming experience of the metal springs actually sparking on the granite grave. And so I leave them off and try to avoid ice patches.

A week or so ago I walked down to the station on just such a day of thaw, I had done well. And I turned off the road on to the concrete path to the station. It was covered with black puddles and I walked confidently on looking at my goal. Suddenly my legs just slid out from under me and I landed on my side in an inch of icy water. Unsteadily and somewhat painfully I made my way across what I now realised was black ice to the station, only to discover that I had misread the timetable and I had a further forty minutes to wait on the cold platform in my wet clothes.

I am beginning to think, that like all the other villagers, I should get a car.These romantic walks in the snow are all very well, but I'm a fifty-year old woman with a back to think about

Winter in the Sumava

This is a picture of my Czech home. It huddles under a hill called Liska Dira (Fox Hole) and is well-named given the number of foxes I hear and see in these winter months. It sits just outside of the Sumava natural landscape protected area, in the foothills of the Sumava Mountains and Forest.

The name Sumava comes from the sound leaves make in the wind - the whispering or russling forest. But at this time of year there is very little sound of whispering leaves, just that silence that comes with snow and maybe a "whoosh" as snow falls from the branches. Right now, I'm sitting in a friend's cottage which sits next to a frozen, snow-covered lake. In a few minutes I will put on my walking shoes and head off into the forest. I need to clear my head and fill my lungs with fresh Czech winter air. But first I am writing this for you.

Our local little train which I travelled on this morning was full of Czechs heading for the deeper snow and forests of the Sumava National Park. The Park is one of the Czech Republic's best kept secrets - forming with the neighbouring Bohmerwald the largest forest in Central Europe - "Europe's Green Lung." Only it's not very green now. On the slopes of the Sumava's mountains there are ski resorts - affordable ones - and through its forests, across its plains and along its lakes run hundreds of kilometres of landlaufing trails.

The sun is out, the snow is virginal and I'm heading for the hills.  

Diamonds in the Snow

I keep writing about diamonds in the snow in the Czech Republic and my British friends and family nod and say "Yes, how lovely". But until you've seen them, I don't think you really can know how remarkable these ice formations are. Even in the recent snowy British winters I have not seen anything like them. They are not just the occasional flash of light against pristine winter snow. They are large crystals that grow in formation as the result of a succession sunny days followed by bitterly cold nights. The UK just doesn't get that sort of weather - a couple of bright days if we are lucky, before the grey presses in once more.

They are inevitably not easy to photograph - so my apologies that my efforts here do not do them full justice. But perhaps they might give you, dear reader, a glimmer of the pleasure they bring me.

In Praise of Skipoles

All this talk about the wonder and beauty of snow is all very well (see my previous post) but there are downsides.

The first of these is the peril of snow turning to ice. As regular readers of this blog will know, I live in a small village near the top of a hill and I usually use public transport, which means a thirty minute walk downhill. However in this weather the walk can take at least fifteen minutes more. The reason for this is the local council sends a snowplough up the road to clear the snow - great if you have a car, not so good if you are on shanks's pony. The snow is piled up on the roadsides, too deep to walk on and disguising the ditch! So you end up walking on a road where the snow has been compacted by passing cars and turned to ice. The council is probably right, no one in their right mind walks along that road in the snow, just that mad Brit. I have noticed that sometimes only my footprints can be seen in the snow for days. Gone are the days when I would have found sliding on ice fun, so my thanks to fellow blogger Salamander for lending me her skipoles and making my journey to and from the house feasible and safe. They have transformed my experience and increased my confidence tremendously.

The second peril is when the snow begins to thaw. You will notice Czechs looking up as they walk along the street and then walking in the centre of the road. After a while you will see why, as blocks of compacted snow and even blocks of ice fall from roofs. At times it can be quite funny, but it can have very serious consequences - this year a baby was seriously injured by ice falling on its pram in Prague.

More on Snow & Frost

Czech winter means snow and frost. And one of the most wonderful of its shows is when a freezing fog settles on our little valley and turns everything white. And so it has this week. The water droplets freeze on everything even cobwebs in the woodshed. Then if you are lucky there are few more nights of fog and slowly the ice grows. The trees on our walk to Horice Na Sumave stand like white ghosts in the fog, covered with long needles of white - now an inch long. Crystals get crystals on them. The seedheads of Autumn flower again, but this time with intricate petals of frozen water.

Then a miracle can happen. The sun comes out and suddenly all those ice crystals start to sparkle. In the low shafts of winter sunlight, the water vapour turns to tiny silver specks, dancing in mid-air like the spirits of winter. At such a time and in such a place it is hard not to believe in magic.

Thaw Continued & Czech Driving Machismo

The thaw had the effect of melting the top layer of compacted snow on the roads leading to our village which then rucked up into tracks, below the snow was now ice. I therefore watched in awe as a number of Czech drivers attempted to drive up the hill to the village. It was essential to get enough speed up to keep the momentum going to the top but not too much that you lost control. Some made it, others made it half way and slid back and one drove his car into the pile of snow on the side and abandoned it.

But the prize for Czech driving machismo and bloody-mindedness had to go to the driver of the car who decided to drive to Horice Na Sumave via the little road. This road rises sharply as it goes out of the village and on this stretch is shaded by two lines of trees making the thawing influence of the sun intermittent. It is very narrow, only the width of one car. Add to this at the bottom of the hill as you exit the village there is a 90 degree turn, which means that you cannot get any momentum before you start on the hill. The final point to make is that this road only goes to Horice, which can be reached from our village via a better and easier road which goes downhill, and so any attempt to climb this hill was totally unnecssary.

But one Czech driver thought better. I watched him (I presume it was a him) make several attempts on the hill, the first time he got a third of the way before sliding backwards, the second halfway. He then disappeared for a while. Aha I thought he has realised the errors of his ways and is going the sensible route. Not a bit of it. There he was reversing (yes reversing) up the hill, again he made several attempts, but he did make it eventually. The very idea of attempting driving up that lane in those conditions was enough to make me shudder, but doing it while looking over one's shoulder hardly bears thinking about. Those mad Czech drivers!

Thaw?

I was enjoying a cup of tea with my friend Salamander on Tuesday when there was a thump as a large lump of snow slid off her roof and fell past the window of her study and on to the street below. The thaw appears to be arriving and Czechs should either avoid walking under the house eaves or keep an eye skywards. Some Czech buildings have spikes set in the tiles presumably to break up the snow and prevent these avalanches. But mine and hers do not.

Here in our village we are higher than Cesky Krumlov where she lives and so the thaw has been slower in coming. But on Thursday night it did, the first sign of it was a loud metal crack which woke me with a start. This was followed by more, heralded by a rumble as a slab of snow (a foot deep) slid down the roof. The metal gutter would take the strain for a while until the weight of snow overwhelmed it and with a crack similar to that of a rifle it deposited the snow onto the ground below. I was sleeping in the backroom where the gutter is very close to the window, so you can imagine the sound. This happened intermittently through the night, usually when I had just got back to sleep.

In the morning I went in to the yard, on the yard-side of the house half a roof's worth of snow had come down (see above). After much work the yard steps had been clear of snow the previous evening, alas no longer they were piled high. This year has been particularly bad, as it has not stopped snowing for days on end and the snow is very thick. Not as thick however as my first winter here when it was at least twice as deep and caused real problems, in particular breaking my old roof timbers. I remember a huge slab coming off the roof of the house opposite and my neighbours having to dig themselves out of their front door. Well, it was my turn this Winter. Shortly after taking the photo above, the rest came down with a terrible crump and the roof now looked like the photo below. If I had thought the snow in the yard deep before, it was literally doubly so now . Now that I no longer needed to worry about more avalanches I set about clearing the steps of at least two to three feet of snow plus a path to the gate. I had been thinking of going into Cesky Krumlov that morning, as I was leaving for England early the following morning but the snow put paid to that, instead I was up to my knees in snow.

Some thoughts on snow

At the moment the British media are full of stories about the disruption caused by the exceptional snowfalls that have beset the UK over the last week. Commentators ask why the British transport system can grind to a virtual halt when other countries cope happily with much more snow. It is, they argue, the fault of government (central and local) to be adequately prepared, a decline in standards among the Brits - slackers who use the excuse of a few inches of snow to bunk off work, health and safety phobia gone mad, what ever happened to the bulldog spirit, blah, blah, blah.

My other country, the Czech Republic, copes with winter snows that last for several months most years. This gives me something of an insight into the situation. It is not true that all the roads here are kept clear of snow, as this photo near my villages shows, far from it - many of the rural roads are neither cleared, gritted nor salted. Such snow clearance as does take place is done by our local farmer, for good commercial reasons. And my observation is that is true of many minor roads in the Czech Republic, you can spot the road used by forestry logging lorries or leading to a factory as they are clear.

Czech cars are obliged by law to have winter tyres fitted every year, which help with driving on snow, but not so much on ice. Whether such a measure would be appropriate in a country such as the UK, which has heavy snow once every 28 years, is questionable. My old creative writing teacher always had snow chains on her tyres in the Winter, but then she lived down a narrow Cotswold lane on a 1-in-4 hill.

On driving in the snow in the UK after driving in the Czech Republic it is pretty obvious to me what the main problem is - namely that British drivers just do not know how to drive in these conditions. They drive too fast or too slow, the latter being as dangerous as the first when attempting to get up a winding steep hill in the Cotswolds. But is it surprising that this is the case? How can they gain such knowledge/experience unless they are sent to the Czech Republic for a few months? That said, a few weeks ago I was standing at the Spicak bus station in Cesky Krumlov when I saw Czech boyracer do a spectacular but unplanned 180-degree spin on the main road - I and the rest of the bus queue gave him a jeering round of applause.

One other thought about why the British have had so many problems this last week - a major cause is I think the British attitude to commuting. When I was a little girl we had the winter of 1963 - a far worse winter than this one. I can still remember it, although I was only four. For weeks my home town was cut off - it is surrounded on three sides by hills. The snow was so deep I have heard tales of people walking to the local papermill on the tops of the hedges. The school stayed open - even though the children's toilets were outside loos, which required the snow being cleared every morning and the ice broken in the toilet bowls (ah yes I remember them well!). But the difference was the teachers would have lived in the town, now they could not afford it. The majority of the population worked in the papermill and other local businesses, now people commute to Cheltenham, Oxford and Birmingham. I believe it is this reliance on being able to travel long distances that has made this year's "snow event" as the Met Office calls it so catastrophic.

I have observed Czechs do not share this willingness to travel for hours just to get to work. Friends in Cesky Krumlov will not consider a job in Ceske Budejovice only 20 minutes away. Is this because of the Czech Winter? I think not, but rather an attitude to work and the work/life balance which thinks an hour's commute even for a better job too much of a sacrifice.

Diamonds in the Snow

Yesterday I went for a walk with my friend Salamander. We took the path up to the woods above my house, the weather was perfect – sun, snow, a clear blue sky, a deep blue I have never seen in England. We are having extremely low temperatures at present -20 degrees last night. It is as they say too cold to snow, the water vapour stays in the air and forms snow-like crystals over everything. On Saturday morning you could even see the ice hanging in the air where the sunlight shafted down, minute crystals would flash in shimmering clouds, a glimpse of the spirits of the Czech winter working their magic. Now we reaped the benefit of their work, we walked through ankle-deep virgin snow, broken only by occasional animal tracks. On the snow's surface flowers of ice crystal bloomed and shone in the sunlight. The branches of the dark firs at the forest edge were picked out by white.


We walked through woods, now bereft of the birdsong which had accompanied my mushrooming forays in the summer and autumn, the only sound being the crunch of the snow and occasional branch crack. Ducking under an electric fence we followed the edge of the forest down a steep slope – in the distance the Klet was bathed in sun, but with a scarf of low cloud around its shoulders. Crossing a frozen stream we regained the path and returned to the house and warm mugs of tea.

As dusk fell Salamander departed and I settled down with a book whilst the woodstove chugged in the corner. Then the phone rang – it was Salamander. “If you can, take a look at the moon.” I walked into the yard at the end of the orchard the moon full hung just above the old apple trees – large and orange. The light was so bright, the orchard was lit up as if in daylight. This morning I left the house at 8am to walk to Horice na Sumave to catch the bus into town. The sun was rising and the sky was coloured. As I walked I watched the sun turn the white snow yellow and the ice on the trees a peach colour. My house stood glowing in the light on the other side of the village. And just to finish off the enchantment across the fields as bold as brass ran my fox. I had not seen him since my return from England at New Year. He looked across the field at me, sniffed the morning air and darted into the cover of the woods. The dawn sun had turned his coat a dark auburn. By the time I got to Horice the world was white again.

Czech winter

Over the last week the area around our home has been transformed. We have had snow followed by a cold several degrees below freezing. As a consequence we have a wonderful winter landscape of bright white together with beautiful blue skies. It has been so cold and still that the water vapour has been unable to form into snow. Instead it crystallises on the branches and the plants and is nothing so like those magnetised iron filings one played with as a child, only white of course. On the ground through a process of slight thaw and then severe freeze the surface of the snow is covered by white feathers of ice, which catch the sunlight and dazzle like diamonds. There is such a magic in these Czech winter days, that it makes your heart leap with joy.

PS I don't usually put up large images on this blog, but have made an exception this time - click the photo to see enlarged version, a view towards Horice na Sumave from the hill above our Czech home.

Sun and snow

Yesterday we walked to Horice Na Sumave to catch the bus into Cesky Krumlov. Although there was snow on the ground the sun was bright and warm, throwing long shadows over the fields and picking diamonds of ice in the snow. Passing over the hill we descended into Horice, the fields to our left were virtually clear of snow. Then rising from the grass a lark flew upwards towards the blue in starts of song. We listened enchanted , our hearts rising with the small bird.

When we arrived at the bus stop the sun had disappeared, across the fields towards us sped a snow cloud. Suddenly all was white and grey. Driving snow forced us to drop our heads and then to give up the fight. We turned our heads away and crouched to avoid the stinging whiteness. The bus came and for a while outran the snow. Arriving in Cesky Krumlov the ground was bare of snow and it looked as though we had escaped, but then the relentless blizzard caught up with us and all was white again.

Last night reflecting on it, it seemed to me that this was how things were in the world. One minute we are ascending into endless blue, the next everything is a stinging white fog, in which all landmarks, both familiar and on the horizon, are lost to us. All we can do when the snow descends is to hunker down, like some small animal, until the sky clears again.

Tomorrow the weather forecast is that the Spring will return again.

Czech weather

It is nearly Easter and it is snowing. Over the last few days the snow has fallen at night only to melt during the day, but yesterday the snow stayed in our village in the foothills of the Sumava Mountains. In Cesky Krumlov the snow melted, but here a couple of hundred metres higher there has been no such relief - the snow is six inches deep and rising. The other thing that is to be noted is the wind, which drives the snow nearly horizontally at times. A wind is a rare thing in this landlocked country and is frankly one thing I miss from the UK. In Britain there is nearly always a wind blowing off the Atlantic, bringing a succession of weathers and affording the British the one thing they can comfortably talk about to strangers.

Czech weather used to be reliable – cold in winter with snow and warm in summer. Now that seems to have changed somewhat. Less snow, more rain (even in summer) and on occasion as today a wind. In the old days the Czech winter came from Siberia, now it comes from the west, indeed from the UK and the Atlantic. Is this a sign of global warming or a meteorological reflection of the new political situation? Time will tell. At least by the time the weather gets here from the UK the gaps between the isobars have widened and the intensity of the wind has lifted somewhat.

My first winter in the house 2

My plans for staying in the house were delayed by the exploding pipe in the bathroom. It was obvious that the house was only just beginning to thaw out and so I spent a week driving up to the house from Cesky Krumlov. There I lit the stove in the downstairs front room, and met a succession of plumbers and electricians who came to measure up the house for new electrics, plumbing and the central heating which was now so obviously necessary. The other task I set myself was to measure the footprint of the house and stables so that I could fill in the horrendous multi-page form to register for landtax. This was harder than one might think - the snow was piled up to my waist and even higher at the back and sides of the barn and so I had to dig a path through with an old shovel. This took me several days.

When the daylight began to fail each day, I drove home to my friend's house in Cesky Krumlov. Finally I was confident enough that I could get one room (the large front one downstairs) warm enough to be bearable. That last evening before my first full day in my Czech house as I drove home I came upon an adult male deer in the centre of the village. He was standing stock still in front of the village crucifix. It looked almost as if the cross was between his antlers. I was reminded of the legend of St Hubertus, patron saint of hunters and therefore so appropriate for the Czechs. Of course the Christian legend of the saintly hunter coming upon the divine stag has its antecedents in the Celtic legends of the horned god of the underworld. In the halflight on that magical evening the lord of the forest turned slowly and departed into the darkness and I carried on.

My first winter in the house 1

As I said in my last post Czech winters have a special place in my heart. One reason for this is the fact that the first time I ever stayed in our newly purchased Czech home was in the terrible winter of a couple of years ago. All over central Europe roofs were collapsing under the weight of impacted snow. We had bought the house a few weeks before the winter had begun, when we had sat in shirt sleeves in the warm late autumn sunshine. By early February the landscape had changed utterly - the snow was several feet deep in the yard and the house was completely frozen.

We hadn't had time to do anything to the house to make it winterproof and certainly not for one of the worst winters in living memory. The family who sold it to us had assured us that they hadn't had any problems with frozen pipes, and we poor suckers believed them. When asked where the stopcock was, they had taken us out of the yard and up the hill for several hundred metres to the farm above our house. There was the stopcock - but unfortunately for us it was also the stopcock for the water supply to the farm and half the village, so there was no question of cutting off the water to the house.

Now in February with the temperature about minus 15 I arrived for my first stay in our new home. We had arranged that a lady from the nearby town go to the house each day for the week before, light the woodstoves and start the process of warming the place up in time for my arrival. I arrived at my puppeteer friend's house in Cesky Krumlov in the evening. As we sat down to a mug of tea, I noticed something was up. "How are things?" I asked.

"Well since you ask, the toilet exploded this morning!" My friend went on to explain that the poor woman had arrived at the house and stoked up the stove, when the pipe leading to the toilet exploded spraying a fountain of ice cold water into the bathroom. She had run into the village and the neighbours had run to her aid - one, a retired plumber, had spent an hour fighting the torrent and getting soaked. My friend had been dreading my reaction. I just started to laugh.

"Why are you laughing? It's not funny, the poor man will probably get pneumonia." I explained that I was very sorry for the man (I would get him a bottle of rum by way of thanks) and for the poor woman. I felt sorry too for my friend who had clearly been worrying about my reaction all day. But I deserved what had happened, for believing the family in the first place - wishful thinking in the face of what was obvious. The old house was getting her own back on us. Although the Czechs don't think of their houses as female, to my mind ours obviously was - an cantankerous elderly aunt who you ignored at your peril: "You think you can disappear off to England and leave me here unloved and uncared for, I'll show you," she was saying.

My friend, relieved, pointed out that there was now no water in the bathroom and so no toilet. That combined with the problems of heating - the house had barely got above freezing meant surely that I would not be staying in the house this time. No, I still wanted to, it was important to me. It would be "an awfully big adventure" I told her. She laughed, "How very British of you. Your neighbours will think you are mad."

Lake Lipno under ice

When I woke up the fog had cleared from the village, though it lay like a cotton duvet in the folds of the hills. It was cold and frosty, but the sun was already up and things were warming.

After lunch I drove over to Lake Lipno – the deep blue lake of the summer had turned polished steel. Slight white ridges running parallel to the shore looked like small waves but as I grew closer it was obvious that ice covered the lake's surface as far as the eye could see. Snow still lay compacted on the ground and the heights of the Sumava mountains were white. Gone were the windsurfers and catamarans of the summer (see my previous post Wot no sea). I had no business there and wanted to get on, but was glad I had come when I did, they are forecasting a thaw.

Irony of Ironies

I return to the Czech Republic tomorrow and my friend emailed me on Friday to warn me that the weather was changing there. The snow was melting, so no skiing. The ice on the lakes likewise so no skating. She and her partner, along with the rest of the population of the Republic had been enjoying both. Now the weather had turned remarkably spring-like, just in time for my return. Although not a skater or a skiier I had been looking forward to the lovely cold bright days of the Czech winter.

The irony was that the email arrived the very day I had taken three hours making a one-hour journey (from Oxford to Winchcombe). The reason for my long journey was a blizzard that swept in from the west, first there was torrential rain causing floods and then as the day turned night it turned to snow. I was caught by surprise - the slippery roads impassable I ended up in a ditch. When I finally got in I emailed my friend back, that maybe I was not so keen on snow after all!