Positively spring-like!

I appreciate that 5d is probably what you would term as fairly chilly.  And indeed it is.  Unless you have had a run of days around -11, -15, when +5 seems positively hot!

It came as something of a shock when I went outside on Saturday morning to find that the temperature had shot up to +8 and that the snow, which I had been absolutely confident would stay in place until at least April, was showing signs of going away!  The fields were almost snow-free.  The chicken orchard only had pockets of snow.  You can see that we have a fish pond.  You can even see some of the plants in the garden.

I almost took my jumper off :-D.

We didn't have anything in particular that we needed to do, so we did nothing, more or less, and then took ourselves to The Nettle for lunch.  There is virtually no snow on the roads, and also none in the car park.  And it was very busy.  I was wondering, when we saw the number of cars in the car park, if we would actually get a table :-S

But we did, and had a lovely lunch. And went home, and continued to do very little at all until bedtime.

Doing very little was rather self-indulgent.  There was quite a lot that I could have usefully been doing.  And having lunch at The Nettle was seriously indulgent, for we were heading down to Salisbury on Sunday to collect The Builder's mother to take her out to lunch.

The plan had been to go to The Swan.  But Matthew has moved from there to a new pub near Romsey.  Being insatiably curious about what my friends are up to, we changed our plans and went to The Wheatsheaf instead.  And I have to say it was a lovely meal.  You can read all about it here.  We all had a good time.

We did not, however, have a good time getting back to Tupton.  There had been an accident on the M5 early in the morning which had closed the motorway in both directions.  Now we knew about that, because there had been signs up saying the M5 was closed between 2 junctions on the way down and we had Gone Another Way.  There were no such signs on the way back so we thought it would be OK.  In fact it was still closed - but heading north it was closed between 4 junctions.  It took over an hour longer to get home.  Thank goodness we had Kathy-the-sat-nav with us, for there were no useful diversion signs to help!  And yes, I can read a map, but it's a little more awkward in the dark!

But at least we weren't involved in the accident.  Lots of people were quite badly hurt and one person died.  An extra hour on the trip doesn't seem significant compared to that.

The weather remained warm(ish) and dry and sunny for the whole weekend. The roads are more or less free of snow and ice. It is positively easy getting about.  It does have improbable suggestions of spring.

They're forecasting more snow for parts of the UK later this week and into next.  People are beginning to worry about their Christmas plans.  We are less worried.  We are supposed to be going to Tabitha and Gareth's place on Christmas Day.  But at least they're close enough so that if we get snowed in we can reschedule and go at another time.