Minus 4.

Caught between the gate posts, entwined with the barbed wire and the gossamer threads frosted with the frozen dew the silky cobweb vies for space with the hard frozen metal. The hard work of the unseen spider highlighted in all its glory, bedecked with little shiny diamonds, nature as intricate as anything man made.

Today our early morning trip to Gillingham was undertaken with the temperature hovering at minus 3 and dropping in several places to minus 4, frost and fog were the order of the morning. The sun struggled to make any real impression until nearly lunchtime but I was thankful for that as it gave me an opportunity to wander the riverbank for an hour. I’d set out on Sunday last with the intention of photographing the little things, the contents of the hedgerow, the flotsam and jetsam that often goes unseen but I was seduced by the scenery and the cold, silvery landscape. Today, without the sunshine and the blue sky it was easier to focus attention and isolate small scenes rather than the bigger picture.

With the reeds, rushes and riverbank seeds heavily laden with the thick frost everywhere looked a little like a scene from Narnia or some such other snowy, fairytale creation. Where I’d struggled on Sunday to find a frosty cobweb this morning I could take my pick, although there weren’t as many as I’d anticipated, there were more than enough to go round but for all of that I still only ended up with one shot. The brittle, last season, cow parsley heads and the teasels bore the brunt of the hard overnight frost, covered, almost to the extent of looking like miniscule cauliflowers on slender, glass like stalks, standing tall in parallel lines between the slow old river and the well trodden, muddy footpath around the field to the mill. Tonight will be the last of the frosts apparently, they’ve been a very welcome change, hopefully we won’t have to wait long for their return.