Winter Solstice adventure

Waking on December 22^nd, that marked the Winter Solstice this year was like waking on my birthday when I was a child. It was that exciting to me. The darkest weeks of winter really get me down, and I have often claimed that this is because I was born in mid August, my birth sign is Leo my ruling planet is the Sun. I am a sun baby.  

So anyway, I was up well before dawn cracked, made myself my obsessively special morning coffee, with exactly the right sized spoonful of the particular blend of coffee that is precisely to my taste, adding the exact amount of CoffeeMate creamer and finished with a carefully controlled, just a tichy bit more than a level spoonful of 12+Active Manuka honey that is added daily, more as a health requirement than the sweetener it most certainly is. The resulting mug is stirred to completely blend all the ingredients thoroughly together. 

Quietly I sat and waited for the night sky to stretch into an etiolated early light.

My celebration of this day when the sun would halt its winter journey south and gradually day upon day begin to makes its way back to a position that I very much prefer. 

In the little cottage where my husband and I live, the sun only shines on the front of the house for around six weeks every summer. There is still only about an hour each day when the light is on the lounge bay window in the morning and then again for a short while in the evening. Still, the sun is high in the summer sky for most of the day as opposed to the dreary November, December, January when my beloved ruling planet seems so out or sorts that he quickly sails so low as if completely out of energy and wishes he didn’t have to get up at all. 

Personally I have never understood the idea of ‘Having a lie in’. This is where I disagree, totally and completely with Mr Sunshine. The amount of sleep I need does not alter from summer to winter and that makes the winter darkness a whole lot worse for me, since I am not capable of sleeping for longer, which I can see might be helpful. Try as I might I still sleep roughly the same amount of hours and wake up regularly at 5.30am or somewhere close to that. Most of the time that is convenient since my husband and I like to exercise in the mornings to keep our fitness levels honed enough for us to take part in our chosen sport of triathlon. 

All this boils down to the fact that I feel a lot better once the mid winter point has started to pass. Steve, my husband and I were up and ready to go for a structured swim set first thing. After that we took breakfast before setting of on a celebratory long walk from our holiday apartment to make sure that this special time on the calendar was memorable marked. 

Our walk through a beautiful Swiss valley was spectacular. We took loads of photos of the magnificent scenery including a few of those shots you see on tourist calendars where mountains and forests are reflected in the glass still lake water. This was Lake Silvaplana. 

We were not alone we quickly realised, when we saw quite a number of twitchers with cameras some of which were on tripods with very long lenses. I bravely tested my poor German by asking one of the birders what bird it was that they were watching. The man was very excited and explained that there was Pacific Diver, a very rare bird indeed only usually seen in Alaska. This group were totally disinterested in the magical reflection in the lake that we had stopped to catch and totally focused on one little bird, it looked to me like a variety of Grebe but with a much lighter plumage. It was a treat for us also since we love birds too. A special bird sighting on a special day. A seal on an important day in my year. The icing on the cake. 

When we left that lake to continue our short drive back to out holiday home Steve pulled in to a parking space at another lake further along the Engadine Valley, a smaller lake where there was not a stunning reflection on the surface because this lake, just a couple of miles away from the glass like Lake Silvaplana, was completely frozen and there were families skating on the ice, some playing ice hockey. 

Out jumped my husband to catch more memories of Switzerland with our little camera. He said that I should stay put and he would be straight back. But in less than a minute his head popped up a hundred or so metres away gesticulating excitedly that I should go over the road and join him. 

We were having such a fun day with so many lovely surprises. 

I got out of the car and closed the door and Steve worked to remote lock. Then I walked across to the central reserve of the road. I was wearing my big old warm coat and big winter boots. I made the old tourist mistake of looking the wrong way along the road and when Steve shouted at me I suddenly saw that I was about to get wiped out by a bus closing in fast. I leaped over the armco like an Olympic hurdler! Steve who has been hurrying to help me caught me and said "No sign of the little old lady act you pull on people sometimes there then".  

He helped me steady myself up, a little shaken I have to admit. The truth of the matter is that I am a little old lady of seventy six and a tad deaf to boot but luckily a very fit woman for my age and one who was very happy to have made a lucky escape for a close call.