DISCOVER March
Perhaps our most mercurial month, March often has us bewildered with its weirdness. But that’s no bad thing…
NO ONE SEEMS quite sure who originated the saying ‘March comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb’, but whoever it was probably didn’t spend a lot of Marches in the Lake District. The chances of March 31st being a lamb-ish sort of day in Seathwaite? Slim.
In principle it’s a great axiom. At the start of March, the weather is roaring because we’re still in the teeth of winter. At the end, things are calming down, brightening up, getting pretty again. And there are literally lambs in the fields. In practice, not so much. Okay the lambs are around, but the weather is likely to be just as rude as it was on the first of the month – perhaps more cruelly so, given that many of us are of the opinion by this point that winter can do one.
Yet, perplexingly, a mid-March day can be bright, sunny, full of promise. Not for nothing do they call it March Many-Weathers. This is the month where your coathooks are groaning beneath big overcoats, waterproof jackets, scarves and beanies, but also with lightweight fleeces, gilets and even sunhats, worn in a variety of combinations from one day to the next.
And Mother Nature is all over the place. Most winter berries are gone, save for the occasional few on a holly bush ‘owned’ by a territorial mistle thrush, scaring away thieves and making his stash last the season. Aflash of limoncello at a field-edge might be the wings of a brimstone, one of our earliest-emerging butterflies.
In amongst the last snowfalls, primroses are out, and the early bumblebees are glad of it. And the daffs are on their way. There’s one spot-on meme by cartoonist Evgenia Golubeva which usually does the rounds on social media this month. It’s the one where an intrepid daffodil bulb leads her pals up out of the soil into the balmy sunshine, declaring ‘COME ON, IT’S SPRING!’ only for the next panel to show them being blasted by an Arctic storm, the pals screaming at their confused-looking leader, ‘YOU IDIOT!’
Yeah, March is a funny one. But stay with it. You may be stuck with a lion, but there’s always a chance it might be Aslan.
WALK HERE NOW
There’s a four-day weekend this March, with Easter Sunday falling on March 31st. So we cast around for a basecamp where you can do four great walks pretty much from the door of your lodgings, and came up with Crickhowell. Nestled in the Usk valley, surrounded by some of the best bits of the Bannau B
