We spent a lot of time travelling on motorways over the UK break, after the cancellation of our flight and resultant stop-over in Hampshire, as well as an unscheduled trip back down to Dorset. To break the time in the car, which was nice enough as we got to see a lot more of the country than we usually do, we pulled off the main A74(M) in southern Scotland to take landscape photos of the snowy hills and dramatic low sunshine. As is my wont in these situations, I just drove down a small road heading in approximately the right direction, paying care of the icy and snowy road, with the aim of driving until just before the road became impassible.
As it happens, the road led around eight miles into the hills, along a dramatically wintry and very white valley. After slithering around quite a few curves, I decided not to push my luck and elected that I would find the next best place to turn around. This turned out to be the village at the head of the valley: a tiny place called Leadhills, which (according to later research) is an old mining village and, coincidentally, next to the highest village in Scotland. Stopping to take a photo of the snow-laden church and stretch my legs, I bumped into a local who pointed me further up the track to a small series of white cottages, telling me of “a van buried in snow” which seemed to be too good a photographic chance to pass up. The nearby cottages, which were white thanks to a covering of snow over their brightly painted walls, were inhabited: the snowblown windows in the seventh photo in this small gallery were lit, showing that they were not abandoned as I had thought.
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