For a fortunate group of people in the UK, last weekend offered a rare opportunity to experience the simple joy of sledging.
In general, I am not a fan of winter weather. Dark, drizzly grey freezing wet days as we experienced on Thursday do nothing for me, or my health, in fact they are positively detrimental as our house is old, cold and drafty. But I make an exception for snow – and was excited to see it coming down in buckets the previous Thursday evening, particularly as it meant I could take pictures of the house with the Christmas lights on, in the snow! (I have renamed them Winter lights, so to justify their elongated illumination.)
On the Friday ‘snow day’ I was determined to go sledging, despite the fact that our sledge was nowhere to be found, after a careful search of the shed and garage (which was no mean feat as it is packed to the rafters.) Instead we settled for some plastic lids of boxes.
There was to be no driving to Cotteridge Park where the nearest hill to us for sledging is, as the hill our road is on is quite a steep slope. And we had seen the fate of some fool hardy drivers who had tried, often rear wheel drive BMWs, (which gives me more pleasure to witness than it probably should.) And so we set out, in much the manner of a slightly more pedestrian Shackleton, or less ill fated Scott and Captain Oates, through the snow and ice towards the park.
It’s worth noting that Cotteridge Park itself is something of a miracle. This beautiful park was threatened with closure – and worse – being built upon by property developers in the 90s – but was saved through the efforts of local campaigners, in particular a lady called Emma who was later awarded an OBE for her efforts. The campaigners became the Friends of Cotteridge Park, and the park is a centre of local community, wellbeing and outdoor activities to this day.
The expedition to the park was relatively uneventful, though walking through snow and ice is certainly strenuous, and I kept needing to stop to hoicke up my water proof ski trousers, which had a tendency to slip down!
After a fortifying stop for hot chocolate and flapjack at the Shed (a carefully camouflaged storage and recreational facility in the park, sometimes staffed by volunteers) we reached the summit of the sledging hill.
And truly it was heartening to see the throng of mainly young families, with children of various sizes, laughing, sliding, skidding whooping, screaming, occasionally crying – and well – sledging down the slope.
Now it was my turn. Having staked out a space and identified a downward strip of the slope relatively free of obstacles (ie. children), I resolutely sat upon the plastic lids we had brought and pushed myself off as hard as I could.
And went precisely nowhere.
I tried again, after turning the plastic lids the other way up.
I shifted down the slope all of four inches.
I tried various combinations, but how ever the lids were arranged, it made no difference. The lids just sunk into the snow.
Who knew?! Turns out the lids of cheap storages are not designed to be sleds.
Somehow, it didn’t seem right to seek to borrow a sledge from the joyful families around me, a phrase about stealing candy and babies came to mind. So – wearily – I trudged back down the slope, through the ice and snow back to the house.
Not to be deterred, however, overnight, we managed to borrow an actual sledge from friends. And so it was that I found myself back at the top of the slope roughly 24 hours later.
Perhaps assisted by the colder conditions that froze the melting snow of the previous day I zipped down the slope – twice in a sitting position- and then once lying on my front.
Is there any more purely joyful experience than sledging?
By Damian J. Hursey
Joy in Enough 