A Wild Vista

With large parts of the UK seeing lying snow at some point over the last two weeks, it’s been a refreshingly wintry finale to 2009, and it looks set to continue into 2010. The snow in Cambridge has been gone over a week now, but sharp frosts and clear skies are back again, with plummeting temperatures.

In a few of the national weather forecasts during the festive season, the central belt of Scotland was singled out with particularly low night-time temperatures — dropping to −16°C for several nights.

“Pah!”, was my reaction. Little dimmed are my memories of several days based in a cottage just outside Roybridge in Glen Spean, between Christmas and New Year 1995. For three nights in succession, the temperature dropped to −25°C. At the same time, Altnaharra recorded the joint lowest recorded UK temperature of -27.2°C (previously reached in 1895, and 1982). I got a frost-nipped nose walking the 1km to the pub one evening, and the following day discovered what happens to “Works down to −15°C” de-icer, when the ambient temperature is considerably lower. (For the record, it curled up in to a little ball, and rolled off the windscreen.) Two days later, after things had warmed up considerably, it felt positively tropical in Fort William with the daytime temperature soaring to −3°C.

Of course, in many parts of the world, such temperatures wouldn’t be worthy of any special mention. I recently re-read Jack London’s famous short story, “To Build a Fire” (full text) chronicling a traveller’s battle with the cold on a trail in the Yukon. Worth 15 minutes of anyone’s time.

I’ll end with an image from that bitter few days in Scotland at the close of ‘95. Daytime temperatures were more reasonable. Indeed, it was warmer on the hills than in the frigid depths of the valleys. Mercifully, there was no wind to speak of, and it was a joy to travel through this winter wonderland. Here’s hoping for more like this before the spring kicks in.

Frosted Spruce, Glen Spean (December 1995).

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