We didn't get any snow...

but we had a lot of rain.
The river has swollen , creeping over the steps and on to the walkway.
Take a look at the bench, now you can sit a while and refresh your tired feet by dipping them into the cold January water at the same time.

Walking through the countryside was a rather wet affair too, the roads were flooded, but then this is winter in the Fens.

Before the Fens were drained, this area was a vast wilderness of swamp where the villages stood like islands in its midst, sometimes cut off from the rest of the country for months, even years, when the rains were bad. And a very dangerous place it was too. Or so the old timer who often sits by the fire in our local pub will tell you if you should care to listen.

"Take this village," he says, "'twas a real isolated place back then and the fog didn't help either.
Come the winter months and the rising of the waters cut the village off and brought the mists and thick fog, no-one strayed far from their homes. They were afraid you see. Superstitious people they were then; believed that when the mists drifted up through the reeds and hung over the trees like gossamer shrouds, that it was the time when strange creatures walked, or slithered from the marshes.

People, silly people who ignored the wisdom of the old and took it into their heads that they were different, ventured beyond the village into the fog and disappeared, you see, or were found, when the spring came and the waters ebbed away, laying in the silt, their bones gnawed clean as if by some great beast.But that was long ago, before the Fens were drained. We don't get fogs like that anymore now, do we?

And there's no such thing as a ghoul or a terrible man-eating beastie...
Is there?"