Last night’s snow rests frozen over the Ribble Valley under a lilac dawn.

As diamonds and sapphire enhance each other’s sparkle and depth, a blue dawn over pristine snow elevates a landscape out of winter’s dreary mud and pewter, and changes our own perception along with it. The world is new again, re-made.

Dawn on first snow brings hushed exhilaration, and from afar, Clitheroe basks in the quiet, nestled within its bordering fells.

Dry-stone walls carry a drizzled topping of icing and tiny frozen dewdrops make for a mirrored hall of Versailles a thousand-fold, the beauty the finer for its fleeting existence. With sunshine’s gold poured over, the melting begins, the illusions drain, the intricacy washes away.

Energy enters by breathing the chill, and turning our faces to the sun, there’s comfort, a promise of seasons changing, of old and new locked in a quick-step across our January fields. This is winter. Soon is spring.