Monday 23 February 2009

A Snowy Tour of West Byfleet

For those of you who've never had the unique pleasure of visiting West Byfleet, we offer to you today, a pictorial tour of the village.

Or, in other words, we took a whole stack of photos when it was snowing and were wondering what to do with them.


The church.



The parking lot outside Waitrose supermarket: the geographic and cultural centre of the village.



Waitrose again.



The train station: an important link to civilisation.



The Basingstoke Canal: home of ducks and longboats, and former link to civilisation before the roads and trains came apparently.



The not-very-green village green.



One of the village pubs.



Village shops.



More village shops.



The snowy traffic lights and the bank.



More village shops.



Lucy's school - school was closed for two days to let the kids (and teachers) enjoy the snow.



This is the church at nearby Pyrford. It dates from 1140 we understand and was worth a photo in the snow.



The Saddlers Arms pub at nearby Send Marsh (a better option than the West Byfleet pubs, just quietly).



The church at West Clandon (another proud "Westie" village) also worth a photo in the snow.

Thursday 12 February 2009

Street Skiing

Oops! We forgot to include a nice picture of Lucy skiing down the street in our last lot of snow photos, so here you go.



And before you ask - no it's not Zermatt or St Moritz or Val d'Isère or Chamonix.... it's West Byfleet. Speaking of which, we've got a snowy tour of the resort planned for our next update.

We took a video as well for a bit of fun, just to show what a great skiier she is!! (until she took a tumble)

Wednesday 4 February 2009

Snowed Under

You may have heard that the UK had a bit of snow recently. Well it's true and in fact the most snow fell in Surrey where we are - about 30cm worth (12 inches in the old scale), which is a fair ol' dump in anyone's books. School was out, trains were out, buses were out and the roads were snowed under - in fact, one of the best parts (besides seeing all that snow) was how quiet it was, and everyone seemed to take over the streets for sledging and snowman making.

We heard some people on the news were complaining how everything had shut down just because a couple of inches of snow fell - well they obviously didn't get as much snow as we did. We had trouble getting out of the front door let alone getting to work/school. Anyway, it was all very exciting and the camera was set to overdrive as we took heaps of shots. To avoid any computer meltdowns (and to keep things interesting) we've wisely decided to not to post every picture we took, but here's a selection to give you the idea.


Snow! Aarrgghh!



Snow and us in front of a post box, which apparently is "very English" according to Jo.



That's the Basingstoke Canal in the background, which you may remember from the long boat blog - a tree had collapsed under the weight of snow and fell across the canal. It was also frozen over in places - no boats getting through today.



More of the Basingstoke Canal - that's the lock where the level of the canal rises. This area is known as the Woodham Locks.



The scene in the backyard.



The slide was probably a bit cold on the bum.



The bins were a bit hard to open.



Lucky Caiti wasn't wearing her white jacket or we'd never have found her.



This is called sledging. Warnie loves it too.




More Aussie sledging.



White street.




Here's our snowman - made with a bit of help from the neighbours....




.....and here's some more impressive snowmen in our street....



.... but this guy takes the cake. He's at least 10ft tall, is striking a pose and has a pot plant for a hat. Without a doubt the most impressive snowman we have ever seen. He was brought to life in under an hour as well.








Next morning, the sun was out so why not take a few more pics of everyone in the garden.


That'll do it for today. We've got more so hopefully we can post them soon! Hope you enjoyed.