the year turns...

I love the 21st, the Winter Solstice, the turning point; It may be utterly freezing right now and daylight hours scarce but the sun is coming back, it WILL get warmer and the are days getting longer!

let it snow...

Generally, as you will read in many holiday brochures for the far west, we enjoy milder winters than anywhere else in the UK. And 'generally' that is true, but this year...

The roads were thick with snow so not worth the risk of driving, and after getting the mountainbike out to do a Tesco run I decided it was actually quite nice out so took a ride up onto the high moors of Penwith.

This area is really one of the hidden gems of West Cornwall, its amazing how few people, even locals, venture up there. Even at the height of summer you can be up there, with panoramic views of ocean on three sides, all about the ancient stones, circles and quoits that are the remains of a once hugely ceremonial and significant landscape, and not see another person. Just you, the wind and the bird song. Utterly lovely and incredibly atmospheric. 

The stone circle you can just about see in the bottom shot is Boskednan or Nine Maidens as it is also called. Most visitors head over to Men an Tol or the Merry Maidens on the south coast, but this one from the late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age period sat on its windswept hill is well worth exploring. It has great energy and a really nice feel, even though a well intentioned but possibly incorrect restoration a few years back changed the feel a little. You can even take a short walk down the hill to the Iron Age village of Bodrifty in the valley below, which odd to think when originally settled the stones were already there looking down and had been so for a very long time already!