The iceman came. The iceman went



      Finally a spell of sustained freezing weather that has iced up the dykes and covered the nearest river with ice from side-to-side.
      Hopefully it will have been cold enough to finish off the last of the weed from the long warm summer and clear some of the best swims. The strange floating weed on the dykes seems to be dead but somehow it does have a habit of reviving itself.
      Where the terracotta land drains move the water out of the land and into the dykes the filtered and crystal clear water is still running. The drained water is not subjected to air temperature six feet down in the peat and soil and it's quite strange to hear it tinkling away in an area where people think that there's no 'running' water.
      Now a change of weather is in the offing for the new year so this will all be gone in the morning and we'll see what tomorrow brings.