It's a Good-to-be-alive Day today

The sky was clear as a bell this morning. No clouds and scarcely any vapour trails to be seen. To add to this the sun was shining as hard as it  could. Which, given the time of year, is not very hard. And it was COLD. -1 C to be exact. Though there was the blessing of no breeze. The light was crystal, and I'm sure I could have seen Hadrian's Wall from here in Kent were it not for the odd hill or two.

However, I thought it was time I showed you what the Lancup Well looks like. It's sort of roughly rhomboidal in shape and about 75 metres across. I don't know how deep it is - but certainly enough for geese to swim on it all year round. Mallards and coots usually come back about March. And for several years we have had a pair of swans. But I've never seen any cygnets.

This is the view of the Lancup Well from the west.  The entire surface of the lake is frozen except for the little bit near the camera. An avenue of trees runs north from the walled garden of Penshurst Place and just touches the east side of the lake.

Two photos of sunset over the Lancup Well. The one through the reeds was taken 2 metres south of the one to the right.

The avenue looking south from the Lancup Well. You can just see Penshurst Place as a small smudge on the right. The avenue runs north a further 500 metres to run into a relatively recently planted wood.

It includes, however, one or two very much older trees which probably belong to the parkland that existed before early 18th century landscaping. I utterly love this ancient, twisted oak tree that is slowly disintegrating.

Here you can see how the old tree is included in the newer avenue.