Lakes The Great British Winter

The British countryside in winter.

Cold, unforgiving, bleak.

As temperatures plunge,

the skies open, the winds rage and the light fades early.

This winter we've seen extremes of weather -

mild, wet and freezing cold.

Conditions that challenge both wildlife

and people that try to survive here.

In this series, I'm going to uncover a side to winter that few of us

get a chance to see.

I want to shine a light

on the bleakness of the British countryside in winter

to reveal its harsh but subtle beauty.

I'll be exploring five of our most extreme winter landscapes.

I'll also be including some of my BBC colleagues' experiences

over the years.

Together we'll reveal what's really out there

during this challenging season.

Today I'm looking at lakes and rivers,

and where better than the Lake District.

I'll be meeting an expert on Lake Windermere...

May I come over?

..a sheep farmer who actively embraces the cold,

and a naturalist keen to show us a lakeside winter spectacle.

-Hey!

-Fantastic.

-Hooray!

Welcome to the Great British Winter.

The British Isles have a magnificent range of landscapes,

from snow-capped mountains to thick forests.

And, thanks to our famously wet climate and landscape, vast networks

of rivers and lakes.

In the summer, these freshwater bodies sustain a rich variety of life.

However, in the winter things seem very different.

At first glance they appear lifeless - deserted.

But scratch the surface and it's a very different story.

This is the Lake District.

The iconic scenery has been shaped by 500 million years of ice ages

and geological processes, but today it's a landscape defined by the fells and by water.

Not only is it the largest national park in England

but it's also the wettest,

with 30% more rainfall on average so far this winter.

A huge annual rainfall - of over three metres in parts -

is channelled off the mountains, forming spectacular rivers

that feed the 14 major lakes that give this area its name.

The scenery might be awe-inspiring, but for those who live and visit here,

the winter conditions can be treacherous,

which is why it's vital to have accurate, up-to-date weather information.

This important, often dangerous winter job falls to Jon Bennett.

His reports of weather conditions on the top of the fells could save your life.

-Hi there!

-Hello.

-You all right?

-Very well indeed. You?

-Good, yeah.

Between December and March, Jon braves the elements

and climbs 3,000 feet to the top of Helvellyn, one of the highest,

most popular mountains in the region -

a job that must be done every day during these challenging months.

You must burn a fair few calories getting up to the top of Helvellyn.

It's a good excuse to eat a few chocolate pizzas, I must admit!

I can't imagine anything more revolting than chocolate pizza!

How long does it take to get up?

It varies from an hour and a half to get up to two and a half hours,

depending on the conditions, how many times you have to stop,

what the snow's like, whether it's soft.

That grinds you down, this soft snow, you know, plodding into it.

But when it's nice, crisp snow, it can be quite quick.

What do you do when you get to the summit?

What does your work involve?

Going up, we actually assess the snow and ice conditions to see what the snow's like - if it's soft,

if it's hard, if it's stable, or most important, if it's unstable.

When we get to the summit, we take wind measurements, wind-chill, temperature.

So rather than being a forecast, which is computer-generated,

this is something that somebody's physically gone up

and had a look at it, so people going up the next day

have a very good idea

of what conditions they should be able to expect.

And we put all this information on the website

when we get back down to the Ranger base.

We're catering for a lot of different people as well.

We cater for people who want the snow, so it's important to say what conditions are like for the snow,

but also it's equally important that some people don't want to go anywhere near the snow.

They don't have the experience, they don't really want to do that,

they want to stay underneath the snow level, then they can judge their day accordingly, and plan their day.

How have you found this weather in particular, this particular winter,

and how does that compare to winters past for you?

At the moment it's extremely mild, very unusually mild.

Normally - what we're walking on here, we'd be either in snow here,

or certainly looking at snow over there on Catstycam.

And literally just two weeks ago there was lots of snow here, so this is very unusual.

I've been doing the job for five years and we've always had snow at this time of year.

And sure enough, only a week after I visited,

Helvellyn received over two feet of snow at the summit.

The harsh winter conditions can make Helvellyn a perilous climb -

but over the centuries that hasn't stopped people being attracted to it.

In 1805, a 21-year-old aspiring artist set out with his dog

for the summit.

He was never seen alive again.

200 years after he disappeared, David Dimbleby followed his trail.

It's believed Charles Gough tried to reach the summit of Helvellyn

by climbing a precarious ridge called Striding Edge.

The path is narrow and dangerous with drops on either side.

People still get into trouble up here, and it's here that Gough's trail goes cold.

Look at this. It's real, natural beauty.

I can't see anything.

Yes, you can. The frozen tarn. Snow. This is as natural as we get in England.

And it's really untamed on a day like today.

You certainly feel that nature predominates here, not man.

Absolutely. Nature tolerates us in a place like this.

It's not a question of being conquered by man or anything.

Nature lets you in on her terms.

I hope she lets us out.

I would say so.

Hello, little dog.

Charles Gough wasn't so lucky.

Three months after he disappeared,

a shepherd found his body at the edge of a lake called Red Tarn.

He'd fallen to his death from Striding Edge.

Gough's belongings - a sketchbook, a pencil, and a Claude glass -

suggested he'd died in search of the perfect view.

There was one mystery about Gough's death.

When his body was found, the bones were scattered all around,

whitened and with no flesh on them.

And beside him, keeping guard, was his dog.

Now, some people said the dog had been there,

faithful all those weeks,

just looking after his master's dead body,

but others pointed out that the dog was suspiciously fat.

Despite their dangers, and tragic stories like Gough's,

people continue to be drawn to the Lake District fells, even in winter,

when unpredictable weather can lead many of them into trouble.

'And in the Lake District,

'seven hill-walkers were trapped in driving snow for more than 12 hours.

'They were finally rescued this morning. Four of them were injured.'

'..walkers had to be rescued from the Lake District today after getting stuck.'

Because of the high number of people who come to the Lake District to climb,

trained volunteers from Mountain Rescue teams

are at hand 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Only last year, I met up with a climber who experienced

the vital work they do first-hand.

And one man who was lucky to escape with his life is Al Phizacklea.

Two years ago, he was at the centre of his own rescue drama

after a climbing accident.

Today he is returning to the scene for the first time.

So, Al, this is the spot, then.

Yeah, I was climbing up there.

I was very close to the top, when apparently I fell off,

and I landed amongst the boulders just here.

That's not a soft landing. These are solid rocks.

Absolutely.

That's an enormous height.

Probably about 10-11 metres.

It's far enough to hurt.

That's an understatement. Al was in a bad way with serious injuries.

Duddon and Furness Mountain Rescue gave him urgent medical attention

and organised an airlift.

Before I had this accident,

I used to think the Mountain Rescue Team were just there

for rescuing people who'd got lost in the hills

or just slipped on easy paths or something like that.

But when it does happen to you,

when you have an accident like I had here,

it just brings it home to you, when you do need them,

-and by God, you do need them.

-Yeah.

Because they are a fantastic set of people.

And, you know, I...

I certainly owe a lot to them.

On average, the Lake District's rescue teams

receive around 600 calls a year,

of which 25 to 30 are fatal.

And, before the 1930s, if you fell, you were on your own.

There wasn't any kind of operation here until 1933

when the Stretcher Committee was formed

to carry people down the mountain who'd got into trouble.

And only after the Second World War in 1947

were more permanent rescue teams established.

The first, at Lake Coniston, in the 1950s.

We had a couple of stretchers,

various splints, rope, of course,

a big first-aid bag,

a few storm lanterns,

and that was about it.

We didn't even have proper footwear, we went in clogs.

Norman remembers the dramatic day in 1947

that saw the start of Coniston's first ever rescue team.

It come a real bad snow and all the quarry men said, "We'd better go.

"We don't want to get stuck up here."

So off they went.

And Jim said, "Oh, I forgot to knock that motor off."

And back he went to his motor.

The other guys waited, waited and waited and he never came.

Anyway, and they went searching, it was blanket, big snowdrifts.

And there's a chap just poking into the snowdrift

and he felt something soft.

"Oh," he says, "there's sheep in here."

It wasn't, it was Jim.

He was in a poor state,

but he got over it.

After that, they formed a body of men

in case something like that happened again.

Over the last 60 years, many people have owed their lives

to the invaluable work of Mountain Rescue volunteers,

especially in winter.

But though it might be treacherous for humans,

there is one resident of the fells

who can survive out here all year round whatever the weather.

The Herdwick sheep.

First introduced by the Vikings,

they've evolved into the hardiest hill sheep in Britain,

pregnant in the winter so they can lamb in the spring.

Hi, Jimmy, how are you doing?

-All right, and you?

-Yeah, good, thanks. Can I come on in?

Yeah, get among it.

-So these are your Herdwicks?

-These are the Herdwicks, yeah.

-What are you up to there, then?

-Just trimming this one's hoof up,

-cos it's got a bit long and it needs sorting out.

-Oh, yeah.

-Hopefully...

-Good-looking feet, off you go. Ha-ha!

So what is it about Herdwicks

that make them so ideal for this type of environment?

Well, it's just the fact

that they've been here for I don't know how many hundred of years.

And it's the environment,

they're just so suitable for the environment.

You know, they're hardy sheep, they're good mothers.

You know, they don't take a lot of looking after, they look after themselves.

They'll... You know, if they find some green grass,

they'll be in there and be eating it.

They're just natural thrivers.

So they manage to find enough

during the winter months out there for them to eat?

Yeah, they find enough to eat to be able to keep themselves going

and also, keep that lamb inside them going, ready for the spring.

-It's a tough season, isn't it, to be pregnant in?

-It's very tough, yeah.

And this fleece, this is lovely and thick.

Yeah, the fleeces are quite coarse and, you know,

they keep the snow and the hail and the rain out.

What do they eat out there in the middle of winter?

Merely styans and bracken that you can see.

-What's styans? I don't know that one.

-Stones.

-Oh!

-It's Cumbrian dialect for stone.

-Oh, styans!

-Styans.

SHE LAUGHS

'Of course, they don't literally eat stones,

'it's Cumbrian dialect meaning they eat whatever they can find.'

They find what grasses there are up there, you know,

what's left, basically.

This winter's been really mild and really wet,

so I can well imagine how they survive out there.

But what about when it's thick snow, ice, blizzards, the works?

If it's really bad, you know,

like the last two or three winters,

we would maybe take some hay up for them on the quad bike

and also we'd put a feed block out

that they come and nibble and they get energy from that.

So that sort of keeps them going if they can't find any grass, you know,

if it's like four foot of snow or something stupid.

You'd think the mild start to the winter we had earlier

would be an advantage up here in the fells,

but for farmers like Jimmy and his Herdwick sheep,

the reverse is true.

Because the summer has been so wet

and there's been so much water around,

we've had a big problem with the fluke, which is a worm,

it's like a flatworm which burrows into the sheep's liver.

It causes, you know, untold damage and eventually it can kill them.

So that's been a real problem

with it being so wet all summer and all autumn,

-and, obviously, the winter's wet as well, so that's not helping.

-Yeah.

So, ordinarily, there'd have been the nice cold temperatures

-and that just killed them off.

-It doesn't kill them all off,

-but it'll kill, you know, a percentage of them off, yeah.

-Yeah.

-And it lowers the burden of the worm.

-Yeah.

You could do with a bit of a cold snap, really.

We need a cold snap, that's exactly what we need, yeah.

-14 or something, that would do the job.

Extreme cold weather has its benefits,

but also its downfalls.

Farming up here in the winter is tough,

but it's not much easier elsewhere in the country.

And when the snow hits,

there's a whole other set of challenges to face,

as Cotswold farmer Adam Henson knows all too well.

Snow like we had at the beginning of the year

and the massive snow dump three years ago in the South of England

created a lot of extra work for farmers like Adam.

One of the major problems in this weather for livestock is water.

Frozen.

The sheep are OK,

they can just lick snow and get enough moisture from that,

but the pigs and the cattle need to drink.

These conditions are pretty unusual.

It's about -10 at the moment.

Colder in Britain than it is in parts of Russia.

So it just means you just have lots of extra jobs,

you don't usually have to cart water to things.

Right.

'We're coping pretty well, but the snow's been far worse for others.

'In Scotland, the sheer weight of snowfall

'has caused barns to collapse, trapping animals,

'and dairy farmers have had to throw away milk,

'because the tankers couldn't make it up the frozen farm tracks.'

I feed these pigs on this concrete pad and the powder,

so I've just got to clear it off a bit.

HE CALLS THE PIGS OVER

Pigs are really hardy.

They'll live out in these pig arks, you know.

We've got a wooden hut there and then just arks of tin,

fill them with straw and they just lie out in it.

They're absolutely fine, particularly these Iron Age ones,

they look like a cross between a wild boar.

They've got such a thick coat.

Whereas the Gloucester Old Spots are a little bit softer,

haven't got quite as much hair, and they were all tucked up in their hut.

'The pigs are as happy as they can be,

'but there's plenty more animals to check on yet.

'Next is the sheep.

'They may be hardy, but it's really extreme weather,

'and I want to see that they're OK.

'It's a chance for the dogs to have a bit of a run-around too.'

So these are our primitive ewes, really.

This is a little North Ronaldsay there, there's two of them there,

and a Castlemilk Moorit next to it.

All of these ewes are heavily in lamb now,

they'll be lambing in April.

And you can see the North Ronaldsay,

she's got icicles and snow on her back.

It's cos her body warmth is staying under her wool,

not melting the snow on her back.

All these ewes will be lambing outside in this field,

so hopefully by April the snow would have gone.

'These sheep have a natural instinct to dig for the grass,

'which they know lies beneath the snow.'

Under here is my winter barley.

Marisota is the variety that I'm growing for making beer.

And, when it's underneath snow like this,

although the ground is frozen,

it's actually fairly well insulated.

It's better off under the snow than being exposed and frosted.

Because these leaves would break off then.

It's actually sitting under here reasonably happily.

'Even in these harsh conditions,

'growers have to harvest winter veg.

'Not easy with the ground frozen.

'Next job is the cattle troughs.

'I've had a call to say the water supply pipe is frozen

'and that's something I need to put right straight away.'

They've managed to dig a hole in the ice.

What you've got to do is take the blocks of ice out of the water.

Otherwise, it just freezes up pretty quick.

I'll get the gas.

There we go.

So whether it's Adam's snowy Cotswold fields

or Jimmy's wetter fells,

this is one of the most challenging seasons if you work on the land.

Winter is not just a busy time for farmers,

here in the Lake District

visitors can number 15 million a year,

most of them treading the paths in the summer

and that can cause some huge problems.

Popular paths, such as this one,

leading to the spectacular Aira Force waterfall,

take a particularly hard battering.

In winter, it falls to people like John Pring and his team

to repair some of the summer's damage.

And it's no small undertaking.

-How are you doing, John?

-I'm fine, how are you?

-Good, thank you.

This is looking terribly industrious for a busy winter's day.

It is, yes. Would you like to help us?

SHE CHUCKLES

I've got a shovel, I might as well, hey.

So what's involved in repairing paths?

This particular path, Aira Force, is very, very popular.

And has become very eroded over the years.

You can see the old line of the path there as it ran up the bank here.

-Yeah.

-And so, it was too close to the edge,

too many visitors falling in... off the cliff face,

so we tried to remove it and move it inland here.

And do you always use stone as the materials for the paths?

It can either be gravel or stone,

depending on what suits the path best.

This is a countryside location,

so natural stone is better.

Yeah, absolutely.

How do you get the materials here?

It's not particularly accessible, is it?

No, with this particular site here,

you can't get very much in the way of machinery,

so materials have to come in by helicopter.

Just for this job, we had 80 bags of gravel and rocks

delivered by helicopter, which took half a day.

In winter, this is when we can get the bigger, practical jobs done.

So this is when we do jobs like this.

So the hardest work happens during the winter months?

Yes, indeed, indeed, indeed.

It's just when it's a bit quieter and a bit easier to get on.

And have you got a deadline when you have to have it finished,

everyone starts piling back into the lakes?

First half-term in February

-is when we like to try and get things sorted by.

-Right.

And certainly by Easter, at the very latest.

'I can't help but be impressed

'by the commitment of all the volunteers working here,

'who put in so much time and effort

'to help preserve the Lake District's outstanding beauty.'

The landscape here is stunning,

and it's easy to see why it's inspired so many people.

Perhaps most famously, at the turn of the last century,

William Wordsworth, as I found out

when I came to the Lake District back in 2011.

"All hail, ye mountains!

"Hail thou morning light!

"Better to breathe at large On this clear height

"Than toil in needless sleep From dream to dream:

"Pure flow the verse, Pure, vigorous, free and bright,

"For Duddon, long-loved Duddon, Is my theme."

It is one of 34 sonnets

that Wordsworth wrote about the River Duddon.

And he's well-know for writing about the whole of the Lake District.

There was something about this valley and this river in particular

that seemed to have a special place in his heart.

'He called the Duddon his favourite river.

'But why did it mean so much to him?'

The Lake District is clearly such a good-looking landscape

that it's easy to understand why Wordsworth was so inspired by it,

but why did he seem so particularly taken with the Duddon Valley?

It's a place he knew when he was a boy.

We know that he came fishing here.

He came back many times in his life.

And, I think for Wordsworth, it had the natural landscape,

it had the remoteness, it had settlements, it had history.

And it has a way of inspiring the imagination.

'But the Duddon sonnets weren't just some of his most personal works,

'they would also revitalise his literary career.'

Up until this point,

Wordsworth had been treated badly by the critics,

really quite severely in certain circumstances.

And he was pleased with the reception from the critics this time.

He was 50 years old,

this was the first real universal praise he'd received.

And it did encouraged him then

to republish most of his poetry later in the same year.

"For, backward, Duddon! As I cast my eyes

"I see what was and is And will abide;

"Still glides the stream, And shall for ever glide;

"The form remains, The function never dies."

'Our rivers in winter have their own unique beauty,

'but there's a lot more going on in them than first meets the eye.'

It's during this season in rivers like these

that salmon begin their lives.

But, at just a few months old, they're swept out to sea.

After a few years in the open ocean,

they are ready to start their epic journey

back to the rivers where they were born.

The reason - to breed.

It's carefully timed so they arrive at the start of winter,

when the cold, well-oxygenated water

provides the perfect conditions for incubation.

They risk life and limb to get here,

battling uphill against the flow every step of the way.

And it's only the memory of the river's taste that leads them there.

They don't eat or rest until they've got to their birthplace,

if they haven't died trying.

The ones that make it here adopt their breeding colours - a rich red.

And males acquire hooked jaws,

because their battle is now against each other.

Females turn their tails from swimming

to the task of digging a nest.

Males focus on the job they've come here to do - wooing a mate.

Once they've spawned, the adults' job is over.

The rivers in winter provide

not only the perfect temperature for incubation,

they also flow fast enough to prevent a build-up of silt,

which would otherwise bury the eggs alive.

From now on, the cool, fast river will look after the eggs

until they hatch in April.

For the adults, it's the end of the road.

Exhausted from their efforts,

for most of them, this is the last journey they'll ever make.

Salmon can be found throughout the UK,

but a close relative, the Arctic char,

is one of the rarest fish in Britain,

found only in cold, deep lakes like this one.

'It was during the Ice Age, 12,000 years ago,

'when the ice melted, that some was left trapped between the valleys,

'and lakes like Windermere were formed.'

With such a wealth of history contained in the muddy lake bed,

it's no surprise that researchers have been studying the lakes' health

since the 1930s.

'And now, the corer is just about to go.

'Compressed air fires the coring tube deep into the mud.

'And up it comes.

'A tube full of Windermere history.'

And records have been continued ever since.

Dr Ian Winfield, from the Centre For Ecology And Hydrology,

has been studying this lake for the past ten years.

-Hi, Ian.

-Hi.

-Nice to meet you.

-Welcome aboard.

-May I come over?

-Yes.

Oh, there we go. As elegantly as I can.

'Winter is a quiet time on the lake,

'with cold temperatures and little food forcing fish to become slow

'and close to hibernation.

'But one fish, the lakes' longest living resident,

'doesn't just make it through the winter months,

'it actually depends on cold temperatures for its survival -

'the Arctic char.'

So, Ian, where are the Arctic char now?

They're out in the main body of Windermere. So they're not at the edges,

they spend almost all of their life out in the deep water.

And the way we find out exactly where they are is by using this equipment.

How does this work? How does this tell you where they are?

This is an echo sounder,

so we use sound to see where the fish are, if you like.

So, the part in the water sends out a stream of sound into the water.

And that produces echoes of targets.

We record those echoes, then we can look at them

very precisely in the laboratory and count which are fish

and which are things at the bottom of the lake or plants and so on.

Are you even able to tell which are Arctic char?

We could tell the size of the fish.

-The bigger the fish, the stronger the echo.

-I see.

But we can't go directly to species yet,

so we do do some netting to determine the different species, as well.

So, what is this telling you?

This is showing a real-time display of what's underneath the boat,

so if you look at this picture here, this echo-gram,

this is a moving display of the water column.

And the thick green line is the bottom of the lake.

-And then these marks above it, these are individual fish.

-Ah, OK.

So at the moment,

we're at the depth of about 46 metres down to the bottom.

Here, it's quite a soft, muddy bottom, and so we can actually

see individual fish lying just above the bottom of the lake.

And they're likely to be the char?

-These are likely to be individual char, yeah.

-Fantastic!

Why are the char sitting at the bottom of the lake?

Well, the char spend almost all their life out in the open

water of the lake, and to some extent, they will move up

and down, depending on where the zooplankton is

and the time of the day.

As far as the char are concerned, it doesn't matter greatly to them

about what kind of depth they are, cos at this time of year,

the temperature is the same all around.

-Ah, OK.

-During the summertime, it may get too warm for them,

right up near the surface.

So this temperature at the bottom of the lake stays consistent

throughout the year?

Pretty much consistent, yeah. I can show you here.

-These are measurements from last year.

-Right.

So, this is 2012, going through the year.

So, this is January, February time. This is the temperature here.

And this time last year,

the temperature was about five or six degrees.

And it's something similar to that at the moment.

The blue line's the top of the lake,

and the red line is the very deepest point of the lake.

And the difference is quite substantial. The temperature's quite high there.

As we go through the summer, we can see the surface warms up

-to something like 20 degrees, in a good summer.

-Yup.

But at the same time, at depth, the water stays really quite cool

and gets to about six or seven degrees.

-This would be too warm for Arctic char.

-Right.

This is absolutely fine for them,

so they spend a lot of time moving up between the different parts.

And as they lay their eggs in the shallows,

if they were to do it the wrong time of year, this would be far too hot?

Exactly, yeah.

And in fact, once you get above five degrees or so,

it's getting warm for an Arctic char egg.

Wow, so 18 is just way too high?

Yeah, the eggs would just die in a matter of minutes

if they were into this kind of area.

'By monitoring the population of Arctic char through

'hydroacoustics and netting, as well as documenting the lake's

'oxygen levels, temperature, and plankton, the last ten years of

'research has begun to build up a picture

'of the conditions in Windermere.'

-So, how are the winters changing here?

-Well, they're changing.

They're becoming much more variable, as they are in many parts of the UK.

You can see this winter is relatively mild.

And we're really at the limits of what the Arctic char eggs can

stand in terms of temperature.

So if it gets much warmer,

the char will really have a problem in reproducing.

So we could potentially see them disappearing altogether from the lake,

-if temperatures warm up that much?

-If temperatures continue to carry on,

I think the eggs are at the most vulnerable stage.

'Since Ian's research began in the 1990s, it's estimated that

'Arctic char populations have declined by 60%.

'To lose the Arctic char from the Lake District would mean losing

'part of our country's natural history for ever.

'Even if our British winter feels pretty chilly to us right now,

'there have been much colder ones on record.

'And as well as scientific research,

'there's anecdotal evidence to prove it.

'The last time that Windermere froze was back in 1962,

'a winter known as the "big freeze" that turned lakes here

'and across Britain into adventure playgrounds.'

'At Ruislip, the water skiers manage to adapt themselves

'to the new conditions.

'With a car instead of a motor boat to do the towing,

'a new sport was born.

'A pointless one, but new.'

'It is also perfect weather for another,

'more Orthodox winter sport, ice yachting.'

'On the East Coast of Britain, freezing winters were once

'so commonplace that a particular type of skating in the Fens became

'a regular British tradition that dates back 250 years.

'Three years ago, Katie Knapman visited the Fens to witness this

'age-old sport first-hand.'

It's speedy...

..it's slick...

..and, although you may not think it,

it's a sport in which Britain once reigned supreme.

'It's speed skating, but maybe not as you know it.

'This is the original version, Fen skating.

'And it's been happening all over East Anglia for hundreds of years.

'Championship races were regularly held on the Fens,

'but milder winters mean they rarely happen these days.

'The big freeze of 1962-63 was one of the best winters for Fen skating

'since the War.

'And this year looks like being the first time the championships

'have been held for 13 years.

'Today is practice day for some, but not for others.

'Still, the odd tumble doesn't put people off.'

I actually learnt to skate on Bury Fen, some 45, 50 years ago.

And I've been coming every time there's been any ice since.

I've now got my two children here, and they're skating around,

bringing the sledge.

Yeah, it's a cold day out! But nice.

'Fen skating has a rich tradition.

'To find out more about it, I'm off to the nearby Norris Museum to

'meet a man who knows more than most.'

So, Bob, this is one of the skates that the original Fen skaters

would have used?

Certainly, this goes right back to Victorian times,

the 19th century, you know, using skates like this back then,

with the wooden body, what they call the footstock,

there's the metal blade with the curved prow on the front cos

we're not skating on smooth, indoor ice like the skating rinks.

It's outdoor ice with humps and bumps and twigs

and things frozen into the ice.

So the prow means you can ride nice and smoothly over the humps

and bumps in the ice.

So you've got to have this on an outdoor skate.

-How did the competitive Fen skating come about?

-I think it's natural.

The Fen people, like everybody else, I suppose,

have always been naturally competitive, anyway.

We know that skates with metal blades,

like the one you've got there,

were in the Fens as far back as the 1660s.

And the first skating race we've got a record of took place in 1763.

So, almost 250 years ago.

So, it's a very old tradition in this part of the world.

So, who were the superstars of the sport?

They were well-known Fen skating champions,

all of whom had nicknames.

-So Turkey Smart.

-Turkey Smart?

-He was the big skatesman one always hears of.

-A great name!

So, he more or less invented the modern style of speed skating,

where skaters...

-They bend over forwards, don't they?

-Yeah.

-A skater going forward.

-A bit of that, isn't it?

-Exactly! You've got it! That's right.

-You haven't seen me on the ice!

-Very, very convincing imitation.

Now, Turkey Smart invented that.

They thought he looked like a gobbling Norfolk turkey, with

the head stuck out forward, clucking away, and the arms going like wings.

-So they called him Turkey Smart.

-Very good!

But when he won all the races, and became the Fen skating champion,

they copied his style, and that's still being used nowadays.

-He was indeed smart.

-Oh, yes.

-Bit like the wind.

Smart by name, smart by nature. That's right.

'With a good dose of British eccentricity and imagination,

'there's no end to the enjoyment

'that our frozen countryside can provide.'

But it's not just intrepid skaters who have to contend with the ice.

In the winter, ducks can often be seen making their way frozen lakes

and ponds, often with a lot more grace than us!

Chris Packham explains exactly how they do it.

You know, one question I frequently get asked about birds is how

do species like these ducks manage to stand on the ice without their feet

melting it and them falling through, or freezing and sticking to it?

Well, if you can take a couple of minutes of geekism,

I can explain why.

Now, first things first, their feet are very different than ours.

They're not fleshy.

They're mainly made up of bone, of tendon,

and they're covered with scales, which are dead tissue.

They've also got very few nerves in those feet,

so they don't actually feel the cold as much as we would.

But they do stand on it, and they do sleep on it,

standing in one place for a long time.

And they've managed this, the whole process,

by having a biological counter-current flow heat exchanger.

It relies on a remarkable network of blood vessels called rete mirabile.

Basically, they cool the warm blood coming from the heart,

down through the arteries,

by exchanging heat with the cold blood, which is coming back up.

Now, this means that the cold blood is pre-warmed,

so it doesn't shock their system and their metabolism,

and the warm blood going down to the feet is pre-cooled to pretty

much ambient temperature, which is just above freezing.

Therefore, their feet don't melt the ice

and they don't have the embarrassment of falling through them.

And one last thing.

How is it that they don't stick to the ice

when they're standing there for a long time?

Or why is it that birds, when they're landing on metal

perches in the winter, don't stick to those, either?

They have dry feet. Their feet don't sweat.

And with no moisture, there's nothing there to freeze,

and therefore, there's nothing there to stick. So there you go.

That's how they do it. It works for them and...

..not me!

It's not just the fish and fowl who make the most of the rivers

and lakes at this time of year, either.

There are also millions of insects that thrive here during the winter.

'While terrestrial insects die off or hibernate over winter,

'this is the time of year that aquatic invertebrates thrive.

'Entomologist Dr Ian Wallace has been studying the Lake District's

'smaller beasts for 40 years.

'He's going to show me what's going on in the rivers today.'

Right, Ian. Let's do a bit of field work! It's been too long for me!

Right, OK.

Kick sampling, which is making use of the fact that the water

current will carry anything which you dislodge into the net.

-So if I stand the net there, then you kick.

-I'm doing my kicking.

It's so strange, isn't it?

Especially on a day like today, in the middle of winter,

it's hard to imagine that there is so much life.

-Oh, yes.

-With the vertebrates, particularly, you think,

"Oh, there can't be anything." There's a lot, isn't there?

-Yes, there is.

-Right, shall we have a little look at what's in there?

-Look at that!

-Oh, juicy!

You've done fairly well, Ellie, for somebody who's...

-The fact is, you've done very well.

-Well, thank you very much.

Right, Ellie. Let's see what you found.

Most of the creatures here are doing well, because winter is the time

when there are dead leaves, which have fallen from the trees,

into the streams.

And dead leaves are a major food source.

For example, these leaves here, if you look at that one,

it's been turned into...

-Oh, wow!

-..A lace curtain!

-Oh, yeah!

And that's things such as the freshwater shrimps,

-but also, caddisflies have eaten the leaves completely.

-Goodness!

Yeah, they have. What else have we got in here?

We've got this caddis larva.

Now, that's one of the species which is responsible for turning

the leaves into skeletons.

This is very easy to miss, isn't it?

'For this particular insect, leaves are not just food,

'they're also cleverly used for protection.'

It's made its case out of pieces of dead leaf

and sticks and some small stones.

And it's camouflaged,

so that it's protected from fish or birds looking for it.

That's fantastic, isn't it? So it'll be growing through the winter?

Through the winter, yes. It's almost fully grown, that, now.

It's such a perfect shape.

How do they make something so uniform like that?

They cut tiny little pieces of leaf, which they then join together.

They make silk, and they use that to glue the pieces together.

-Do they vary much?

-They do, yes.

Different species make different cases.

-Now, that one there has concentrated on using sand rings.

-My word!

-Sticking each grain of sand on.

-Each grain, yes.

-That's so intricate!

And it'll have chosen the grain.

It'll have very carefully gone around and measured the piece of grain.

"Yes, that's the right size for me," and then stuck it on.

-Isn't that extraordinary?

-I know.

-It's completely marvellous.

'And while the leaf detritus allows plant-eating insects to feed,

'these in turn provide food for carnivorous insects who have

'also made this river their home.'

-Ooh, look!

-What have we got?

-Oh, that's nice!

-Well, that's enormous!

-What's that?

-It is. By God, yes!

That's the nymph of the golden-ringed dragon fly.

It's called a sit-and-wait predator because it just sits and waits until

something, and it could be a caddisfly larva,

comes within its grasp.

So the leaf fall begins what is a very active ecosystem

throughout winter?

Yes, it does. Yes. Yes. It's all fuelled by this leaf fall.

And, of course, without them, the leaves would clog up all

the streams, the lakes would be just full of dead leaves.

Yeah.

A lot of these insects thrive in the winter

but not all of them survive.

They themselves are a great source of winter food for other animals.

Like the dipper.

Thanks to aquatic insects,

there's enough food for these birds to stay in Britain all year round.

And for birds that live in colder climes,

our winters are literally a life-saver.

In countries like Iceland,

sub zero temperatures cause the lakes to freeze over,

and with them the food supply to birds like the whooper swan.

With their offspring as young as three months old they make

an epic 800-mile journey to the UK, the longest overseas flight made

by any swan, to reach our warmer climes and the food that they offer.

In 2001, Bill Oddie was lucky enough to witness

the arrival of a group of winter visitors as they ended

their epic migration to Martin Mere in Lancashire.

These are whooper swans

and they've literally just flown in from Iceland.

They do it in a non-stop flight.

800 kilometres day and night if necessary.

Flying at speeds of getting on for 100k per hour.

Why do they come here?

Well...

hard to believe, actually.

It's flipping cold now, I'm telling you.

There's an east wind blowing and I'm freezing, but these birds,

they think this is the tropics, basically.

Right now in Iceland when they breed it would be ice,

it would be snow, but more to the point, the ground would be

frozen solid and they simply wouldn't be able to get any food.

But down here, oh, bask in the Lancashire sunshine

and nibble away.

Mind you, as if this isn't enough for them,

the Wildfowl And Wetlands Trust

have a sort of supplementary diet programme going.

There they go.

Well, at least we know they won't go hungry

and can stock up on food before they have to make their epic

return journey back to their breeding ground next spring.

These swans were one of many animals to catch

the attention of an eminent 18th century naturalist.

Hugh Alexander MacPherson, a Victorian clergyman

who spent two decades researching and recording the animals that

lived in the Lake District year round, even in the worst of weathers.

In his time, MacPherson recorded 421 types of vertebrates

and 262 different birds.

Most of the species he documented can still be found here today.

But some, like the stoat, are now very rare.

Usually reddish brown in colour, in winter something remarkable happens.

The drop in temperature

and daylight hours triggers a dramatic change in hormones

turning them almost entirely white to camouflage against the snow.

'One man who has carried on in MacPherson's footsteps,

'naturalist Stephen Hewitt,

'has been following one of the Lake's more elusive creatures.'

This is a beautiful spot, Stephen,

but what have you brought me down here for?

Well, this stretch of the lake at this time of year in particular,

is a really important place for otters.

It's only during January/February time

that they're using this stretch of shoreline.

'And the reason is that this is the time of year

'a fish called the schelly spawns in these shallows,

'providing a tasty feast for the local otters.'

What we need to do is look for the droppings of the otters,

and hopefully we might even see the remains of the prey that has

attracted them to this area at this time of year.

So we need to have a little search on this shoreline.

Yeah, let's walk along here.

-We're looking on rocks for droppings and other signs.

-OK.

Ah, so here's our first sign.

We've got a spraint right here.

I don't want to tread on it.

-It's pretty fresh, isn't it?

-There's one here and another one here.

The way to tell an otter spraint,

usually they're full of fish scales and bones and look quite spiky.

They're fairly distinctive to look at,

but the sure-fire test is to have a sniff.

No, that one doesn't really smell at all. That's a better one.

That's fresher. There's no doubt about it to my mind.

I'll take a second opinion from you, Ellie.

No, that one's not smelly at all.

'Yep, undeniably otter.'

And we've got some fish scales here.

Yes. These are interesting.

These scales are actually the scales of the schelly.

In fact, you can see these scales are in the spraint.

-Yeah, quite clearly.

-So the otters have been eating these,

but these haven't been through an otter's body,

so this is where an otter has brought a fish ashore,

landed it, and eaten it on shore,

and all that's left of that meal is this patch of scales.

So it's just for this short window in winter that we get this

flurry of otter activity?

Yes, it's only when the fish come in to spawn that the

otters can get them, but they really do focus in on them

and you can get huge numbers of spraints, lots of signs of otter.

Most freshwater otters are nocturnal and extremely skittish,

so very difficult to see, but I want to catch at least

a glimpse of this winter spectacle, so I've got hold of one of these.

An infrared camera trap.

Having seen all that evidence of otter activity

I think this spot gives us a good chance of catching them

on camera when they come here for their night-time feast.

The otters are pretty lucky here.

Every winter the schelly come and spawn in the shallows

and give them a good source of food,

but elsewhere in the world like Yellowstone National Park,

the season can be much harsher.

In 2009, the BBC were there to film a family of otters struggling to

survive the bitter winter.

Now that the rivers are not only frozen but covered in deep snow,

they are struggling to find open water to fish in.

They can't fish here. The fast-flowing water is too dangerous.

Somehow they need to find a way past the falls.

With the falls safely behind them,

the otters are forced to keep moving on.

Open water has become a rare thing in Yellowstone.

The otter family has arrived at Yellowstone Lake.

Here they can fish in the holes kept open by the underwater geysers.

But every time they catch something...

..this coyote has been watching and waiting.

The otter dives under the ice to hide its fish from the coyote.

The coyote can't see the otter because of the thick cover of snow.

But he can hear him.

The otter emerges without the fish.

He's stashed it somewhere under the snow, but where?

A huge Yellowstone cutthroat trout.

With the help of the otters, a wily coyote can catch fish, too.

A beautiful winter's morning in the Lake District, and I can't wait

to see if we've caught any of our British otters on our camera trap.

-This is the exciting bit, Steve.

-Yes.

-Find out what we've got.

-Anything at all.

-Oh, don't, I can't bear it.

Right.

It's daytime.

Waving grass in the wind.

-That's a whole minute of grass waving.

-That was good.

-Disappointing, disappointing.

-Any more?

-Fingers cross.

-Ah hah!

-So...

-Something anyway.

-Magpie.

-Magpie.

-A heron.

-It's a heron, right there.

-Oh, buzzard.

-Oh, wow!

-Lovely.

That's fantastic.

Do you see many buzzards down here?

-Never caught a buzzard on camera before.

-Wow, a first for you.

Yes, really good.

-Oh, some eyes, some eyes.

-It is an otter.

-Hey!

-Fantastic.

-Hooray!

Look at that. Fantastic.

Oh, that's brilliant.

Grooming's really important to regulate their heat?

Yes, they have to keep their fur very clean. This is brilliant.

Oh, is that schelly there?

There's a fish just there. Is that...

-It's enormous!

-It is.

-What a catch.

-Fantastic.

Gosh, that's a really big fish.

This is what I struggled to get previously,

is to actually see the fish clearly, what they're eating.

Look at the size of it. So, clearly, enough for two

-and they're happy enough to be feeding together.

-Yeah.

-Ah, a cheeky fox.

-Yep.

-Wow.

THEY GASP

That's an otter chasing the fox.

It seemed to pounce on it, there.

The otter was obviously still in the vicinity

possibly with food of its own and it's chased the fox away.

It's driven it off, defending its own food resource.

Without having seen that,

I would have struggled to know which would have come out better.

-A fox is bigger.

-Yeah.

-That's just brilliant.

What great footage.

It's not just otters benefitting from the schelly spawning.

It seems to be herons, foxes, we've had a buzzard.

Yeah, there's a lot of things. It's a food bonanza.

-It seems to be this bonus material in the winter.

-Yeah.

There's lots of things clearly finding an extra food resource here.

Just following in behind the otters.

That was fantastic, wasn't it?

-That was brilliant. Thank you very much.

-No, not at all.

Thank you for showing us where we needed to come.

-So much life in the winter.

-That's fantastic.

You've got some stuff there I've not seen before.

To see them actually eating the fish was brilliant. Really good.

Yeah, fascinating stuff.

Winter on Britain's rivers and lakes is a time of contrasting fortunes.

For humans and animals, the season can be harsh, forcing them to adapt

their behaviour and even their appearance.

But for others, like these otters, winter can offer times of plenty.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd.