X-Country Skiing - Hooray!

Feeling better today and outside it was perfect for a walk, or, as HarlingDarling suggested, a x-country ski.  All the gear was made ready in November but the snow melted before we could use it! Now it was all to hand and off we went.
It was the season's first trip so we started on a nearby lake.  Frozen lakes have the advantage of being flat! Usually we need to follow a snow mobile track but today the snow was hard so we could ski anywhere we wanted to, as long as we were sensible.
In this Blip we are being sensible. This spot is where two lakes join and there's always a current flowing under the ice. On the right of the ski tracks you can see an area of ice with no snow on it. That's because it was open water a few days ago when the snow fell. So just here we stay well over, skiing over frozen marsh. We know our local lakes well so we feel very secure skiing over them.
Later I gained confidence and skied down across the nearest fields (500 metres of zooming downhill) and up into the forest.  I paused for breath in the forest and was impressed by the DEEP silence.  The snow just absorbs sounds especially when the trees are also covered in snow (extra photo).  No roads, nothing moving in the forest, no wind, just silence.  Moments like that are well worth the sweat of getting there!