More cold

No, not a mistake photograph - this is a frozen pond with drifting snow blown by a fierce wind (see below).

This is my first experience of a real winter for several years now (since early 2006), so I'm getting accustomed to cold again and also getting back into winter sports I haven't done in years.

There was some good snow earlier in the month, so after school I was heading up to Pippy Park (right in St. John's) and going cross-country skiing or snow-shoeing. The trails were pretty well groomed there due to skidoos using them, so to snowshoe I went off-trail and ended up frightening some dog-walkers when I finally re-emerged on to the trail from the bushes and spruce trees.

The other weekend I went "up the Southern Shore" (south of St. John's down the coast of the Avalon peninsula) to visit my boyfriend Patrick at the cabin (a cottage we'd call it in PEI, but a winterized one) he's living in for the winter at Kingman's Cove. We went for a walk through the woods (no need of snowshoes as it was a packed trail), but then couldn't find a return trail through the woods and so ended up walking along the frozen pond for about a kilometre in a bitter wind (and unblocked wind since we were on a pond). We walked backwards to keep the wind off our faces, and then when we reached the end of the pond we were able to walk over a hill across the barrens (wind at our backs, fortunately).


Caked with snow from the walk on the pond (all in good fun). I turn pink both when cold and hot, just the colour I'm meant to be it seems.
Part of the community of Kingman's and its cove.
The snow melted (except for frozen banks) this past week, but then froze all over the ground, so there's a lot of ice about. I've considered skating instead of walking along the sidewalks. I went with Patrick for a walk in one of the parks and ended up sliding on ice whilst grabbing hold of fences and flailing about to regain my balance like I was in Mr. Bean sketch. Unfortunately, there's no photographs to document that.