Daily Photo – Hawkdun Station

I drove to St Bathans from Ranfurly on icy roads, with snow banked on either side and my tyres crunching over the frozen surface to the steady flapping of the windscreen wipers. Heavy snow drifted through the air, and I became increasingly convinced that I was going to hit a patch of black ice on some lonely back road, spin off over a bank, and eventually be buried beneath the snow, only to be found several months later in the thaw, with the story of my strange disappearance left to be told on some random podcast years later.

Just then, the clouds parted, the sun broke through, and a vast, pristine winter landscape stretched beneath a clear blue sky. Mounded, pillow-like formations of snow blanketed the uneven ground, occasionally broken by frozen streams. In the distance, the Hawkduns showed themselves as a majestic range of snow-covered mountains at the edge of the serene, snowy expanse. I rounded a corner, and the quiet settlement of St Bathans came into view.