Setting off as dawn breaks it’s minus 7, the clay earth, soggy with rain and snow from last week’s snow and rain has hardened in the frost crackles under my boots

The weekend tracks of walking boots, bike tyres, dogs, horses and tractors are frozen like prehistoric dinosaur tracks.

As the sun rises above the pine trees of the “forêt de Bournazel ” it turns the snowy mountains of the Cantal pink.