Snow showers in Spalding

Winter's returned with a vengeance! Pete and I drove over to Spalding in the morning to see his Mum and take her some slightly late Mother's Day flowers. There was a dusting of snow until we reached Spalding, when it suddenly became deeper, with about an inch of fresh snow and frequent heavy snow showers verging on blizzards.

After a morning of coffee and chat, we took Rosie for a lunchtime walk along the Coronation Channel, a watercourse that was dug in 1952. On the way out we were heading straight into the north-easterly wind - eye-wateringly and bone numbingly cold. There was a group of about ten goosander on the water, and I decided that I needed to put the telephoto lens on to photograph them. I had to take my glove off to do this, and almost immediately the tips of the fingers of my right hand went numb - I thought of poor Sir Ranulph Fiennes. I certainly don't envy those taking part in the current Antarctic expedition.

The afternoon was spent preparing a slide show that I'm giving on Thursday about the wildlife of the local stretch of the River Nene. I certainly have plenty of images to choose from, but making a final selection is going to be hard....