Shades Of Green In The Cheshire Plain..

I've been posting a surfeit of snowy pictures on my blog since Christmas Eve. However, it's under false pretences; my world is far from snowy at present. It isn't particularly icy either; it's actually been rather warm for January.
Today, on the year's first Sunday, there are many shades of green to be seen on the Cheshire Plain. There's not a snow plough in sight, not a single frozen pond and certainly no footprints meandering across pure white fields; Cheshire is undoubtedly a green and pleasant land.
Perhaps I'm tempting providence and later this winter, we'll have snowstorms and snowdrifts and icicles really will hang from the garden wall, but there's certainly no sign at present.

This weekend we stayed with friends who live in a village near the Sandstone Trail. This is a 32 mile walking route; it takes its name from the sandstone ridge dividing the lowland plains of East Cheshire from the river Dee basin in the west.
The photograph above was taken yesterday from Larkton Hill ( by my husband, I hasten to add. I was lazing in my friend's kitchen, supping tea and nattering...) The hill overlooks the wonderful light and space of the Cheshire Plain. On the top of Larkton Hill are the remains of Maiden Castle; this was an iron-age fort dating back to the 1st Century B.C. The name, according to JMcNeil Dodgson's book:" The Place Names of Cheshire", is derived fom "Maegden" ( the Old English for "virgin" or " untaken" , as in "untaken fort" )
The views from Larkton Hill, believe me, will always lift the spirit, with or without a hipflask...