It froze during the night, the temperature in our part of Ormsaigbeg dropping to -3C. Then, just before dawn, it snowed, a gentle, big-flake snow which, falling from a still sky, settled where it first landed, leaving a layer about a centimetre thick. Usually, snow is blown into gullies, but last night's clung to every rock outcrop - the result a strange greying of the hills. The picture above was taken from the Ormsaigbeg croft lands looking across the Sanna road towards the mountains to the north of Kilchoan.
We had not a breath of wind all morning so the mist lingered over Ben Hiant, the clouds suggesting that, at any moment, we might get another light fall of snow.
In the pools where the streams slowed, a crust of ice had begun to grow out from around a small rock, but before the whole surface could freeze over the snow came and powdered it like icing sugar....
....while, at the waterfalls, where the splashes that had collected on the twigs had frozen into icicles, the snow settled there too.
As we reached the end of our walk a warm sun was busy burning the snow off the bushes and rock outcrops, and when we stopped where a hazel straddled a stream we saw, in the pale morning light, the first catkins of spring.
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