I always consider myself lucky but since I started this six-week abstinence from windsurfing the weather has played along with me. Not only did it snow but it was the fluffy stuff we expect to greet us at the top of foreign mountains, add the daily routine of donning the ski gear and the closing of the schools and it stared to feel more like a holiday then an exam week.
Snow kiting across the planes of Great Bentley and snow boarding down the Essex Alps of Colchester, though I will confess the latter was more successful. We looked everywhere to find an open area to catch the northeast wind, Bentley seemed the best option morning so spent the night dreaming about kite looping over cars using the road that normally divid’s the green.
Now I know why they are called dreams, reality couldn’t have been more different. The promised wind was lacking and what there was had to fight its way over the trees as the top end. It wasn’t anything like expected but fun never the less, we all got going and five small jumps was all we could manage, thankfully my boys bolstered that total when we headed for Colchester.
Here in Essex we’re not blessed with many hills let alone mountains and with these conditions being a once in a life time experience I’m not surprised the council hadn’t erected a ski lift. We arrived to find an already packed hill but while we only had a couple of snowboards to share I couldn’t resist making the first run.
The thrill only came from snowboarding on home ground, the walk back up soon reminded me that that it was only fair to let the others have a go, I’ll stick to the camera. We’d driven to the far side of Colchester so the boys could jump of a foot high snow ramp, the ridicules thing was we were there because their teacher who lived round the corner from this mountain couldn’t make it to the school that was two hundred meters from our front door.
Don’t want to get into a political rant, but as you’ll see from one of the last pictures the busses were in Brightlingsea before 7am, my 20-year-old daughter was already at work in Colchester so I’m just wondering what the problem was. But my favourite waste of time had to be the clearing of the footpath by the old church.
At the outskirts of Brightlingsea this one hundred meters of cleared path served no one, the nearest house either side was a quarter of a mile away and to reach it you’d have to drive a snow packed road or walk the snowy path to a Church that was never going to open. Couldn’t this time have been put to better by erecting a ski lift, at least it would get some use one day.
