There must be a certain smugness on the face of some 4x4 drivers, the rugged capabilities of whose vehicles seemed never likely to be put to the test. This week, even Chelsea has been a bit slithery, and its ‘tractors' have come into their own. I could have done with one, when sliding around some Welsh hillsides before Christmas. I nearly experienced some hours of forced companionship with a Tesco driver whose van had got stuck. At least we would have had plenty of food to keep us going. After several attempts, the car managed to claw its way back up the icy slope down which we'd come, but it was a close thing.
Heavens, Oxford looked beautiful in the snow when I was there for the Farming Conference. The courts of the colleges were perfect, unblemished squares of deep, downy white. Miniature snowdrifts built up on the bicycles chained by walls. It was not somewhere to linger, however: the car had become an igloo by the time I found it, and it snowed all the way home. Unable to go anywhere, I now find myself with some unexpected time on my hands. I could write a novel. No, I'll make pea-and-ham soup. If the supermarket shelves go bare, we might need it.
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'The whole house shook. Everything was white. For four months, it felt as if we were on Mars': The story behind one of Hampshire's most breathtaking gardensWhen Kim Wilkie sculpted a tiered grass amphitheatre behind this 17th-century house, the garden finally settled into place, as Non Morris discovers.
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'I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed': Inside Jane Austen's Winchester home, the house where she penned her final words and drew her final breathJane Austen spent the last days of her life in rented lodgings in Winchester, Hampshire. Adam Rattray describes the remarkable recent discoveries made about the house in which she died.
