Cambridge in the Snow
This week has seen Cambridge transformed from an already beautiful city into a Narnia-esque winter wonderland, in quite unseasonable fashion (the 1st of March is meant to be the start of spring!). The so-called 'Beast from the East' weather front arrived with a vengeance, bringing with it icy winds, sub-zero temperatures and, for many parts of the UK, quite a lot of snow. Monday morning (Feb 26th), Cambridge was looking like this, cold but beautiful and sunny, and apart from the temperature it definitely felt like spring was just around the corner: St John's Street before winter came back with a vengeance We managed to film this footage later the same day, of when the snow first arrived in Cambridge. The three clips were shot within the space of perhaps half an hour, showing how quickly it went from a few flakes, to some light flurries, to what felt like an absolute blizzard! Our European cousins, and those across the pond in Canada and the USA, who regularly experience and cope with far worse conditions during their winters, were undoubtedly looking on with bemusement. The UK was plunged into a frenzy of rolling news coverage about the snow, panic-buying in supermarkets, road closures, school closures, cancellation of sporting events and flights, and so on. Of course, it didn't stop the intrepid and hardy from going punting: Is it the novelty of snow that makes us both so fascinated by it and simultaneously unable to cope with it? The fact that it happens so infrequently does mean that we don't really have the infrastructure to deal with it. Most of us don't have the clothes or the driving skills to make the [...]