In the Bleak, Mild, Wild, Wet, and often Windy Midwinter.

                                                ALL PHOTOS CLICK FULL SCREEN.

We haven't had much snow this year in the current winter of 2024/2025. Just a couple of days of brief snow flurries, interspersed with a week of minus 7c to 12c overnighters, mainly ice and frost everywhere, then back to milder conditions for the rest of it.

This was a walk around Clydebank. Incidentally, this bandstand was used for a children's TV programme back in the day featuring Siouxsie and the Banshees, a Punk/Goth/ experimental outfit. ( This short video can be viewed on dailymotion for anyone interested as I 'd just watched it prior to my visit after wondering beforehand.... has anyone famous ever played on/in it? Still a totally unique group, (at their best, with good acoustics online, no one else quite like them.... musically or visually, before or since.)  Musical pioneers in that particular genre. Yet rarely mentioned nowadays.

Far less snow, so far, than past Scottish winters. Milder, thankfully, for those of us being very careful with energy bills, given the huge potential cost of electricity and gas use this year. Yet almost £300 million paid each year to turn off Scottish wind turbines during periods of steady wind but low demand that is added to the bill of every UK household in Britain. And during storms. Unless you have a turbine yourself of course. Then we pay you for having it.... and switching it off. I'm still warm though in my thermal vest, padded jacket, balaclava and 3 season sleeping bag.... used indoors. My heating is only on if it's below freezing outside, mainly to keep my pipes from icing up, and running them for 10 seconds( hot tap)... 20 seconds (cold tap) every few hours also keeps them safe if it's below minus 3 to minus 10. Especially in the morning and last thing at night. 5 or 10 quick seconds on full (hot tap) means the central heating boiler does not come on but the water runs briefly. I mention all this because I think I've nailed winter now, for myself, by these methods and clothing and have stayed comfortable, despite not having the heating on much indoors. Obviously, during a really cold snap you need a warm house for pipe and house/health safety but when it's 3c to 10c above it's no problem to go without heating ... for me anyway. My chest/breathing also tells me when it's time to put the heating on but so far it's been fine and clear this year.

A lot of different winter conditions to experience and photograph this year. A misty evening back in late December 2024.

Perfect for a walk along the canal from Anniesland to Clydebank. Getting an 11 bus back.

Fairly eerie and gothic wandering through a deserted Knightwood Park at dusk, but a stillness I like. (At the moment, Friday 24th of Jan, outside my house, and across Scotland and Ireland in general, 80mph to 114mph winds are blasting through garden fences, destroying outdoor conservatories and ornamental furniture... toppling both young and mature trees and power lines across roads and onto parked cars in the sort of casual destruction that's fairly common for winter storms these days now. 

It's the wildlife and anything left outside that suffer the most of course. Knightwood Pond from 2016. Loads of birds. I noticed this time around though this pond has sprung a leak and is a shadow of it's former glory. Only a few dozen forlorn gulls remain here today, battered by howling 80mph winds as the pond is 3/4 empty and easy for foxes or other predators to snatch unwary birds in only ankle deep water. With the current state of the UK's permanently potholed roads, overcrowded hospitals, full up prisons, and everything else in 3rd world level broken Britain I don't think repairing a leaking park pond in an outlying suburb will be high up the list of anyone's important things to do..... 

So views like this one ( it could be an unofficial wildlife reserve here, given the bird numbers each winter) is sadly an archive event now.... until it is eventually repaired/ fixed.

All the fun of the fair... as a passing spectator to this annual occurrence.

In many ways 2016 seems like a very different world to 2025. Only nine years ago though.

Mist and silence is good for creating atmospheric photography on long walks.

I was particularly pleased with this effort. Reminds me of old black and white British films of the notorious London fogs of yesteryear. Or Hammer horrors.

A frozen solid canal in December 2024.

Great Western Road at Knightswood Park.

Yearly winter struggle in a rapidly freezing pond. Roughly half of all wildlife dies in severe or very unpredictable spring/summer/ winters. Mass flooding events, wildfires etc...

Tufted Ducks. Mild again in park pond a few days later.

The shining path.

So all you can really predict, with any certainty, for the weather forecast worldwide, in 2025....

 

is expect more.................. of the unexpected...