The Beast from the East

Well the forecast was right and the beast from the east hit us and we woke up to a fair amount of snow this morning.  So I decided to get up and out with my camera, the plan being to go to Ditchling Beacon which is the highest point around here.  I messaged Alison to see if she fancied joining me, which she did, and I set off at 7.15am to pick her up.

The roads were fine until I got towards Woodingdean where she lives, and the snow started falling quite heavy and was sticking to the roads.  Alan was a little ahead of me on his way to work, but he phoned me to say that he couldn't make it up the hill and was turning round and heading home.  He then called me again to tell me to go home as the roads were too bad, he said the traction control was permanently on and he'd seen a couple of cars slide into lamp posts.   However, there was a lot of traffic and the roads were quite bad, so I decided to park up and go for a walk with Alison across the fields, and that turned out to be a good idea as by the time we were ready to head home, the traffic had eased and the snow on the roads had melted.

Anyway we had a nice walk and came across a field of sheep - the poor things looked very cold and there were two in particular who didn't seem to be doing very well - one had a bad leg and one was separated from the flock and stood on it's own by the fence and the frozen water trough, shivering.  It even let me stroke it's face, which isn't normal.  Alison got on the local facebook page and sent a message to see if anyone knew the farmer to let him know, so hopefully the message got to him.

I got home about 10am, had a shower and got ready for work and then headed out to meet Anne for lunch at Pizza Express before work.  We had a nice warm salad and then had a stroll along the seafront, by which time the snow seemed to be starting to melt.  It's since snowed more though and is set to drop to about -5 degrees tonight.

I was hoping that we'd get some cancellations at work, but we haven't, so I'm here until 8pm - just hope the roads are ok, and hope you all stay safe and warm!