Winter journey

The bare trees - temporarily bare, showing their shapes, and letting the sky shine through - are the best thing about winter.

These photos were taken as we were leaving Belgium, December 2009 - at least we thought we were leaving. We didn't know there were problems with Eurostar and that we'd be stuck in Brussels for two extra days - or that we'd get a compensatory Eurostar ticket which, used the following December to get to Amsterdam, would again involve a return fraught with delays because of snow, resulting in yet another compensatory Eurostar ticket ... which was used (Paris, December 2011) without further incident.