I'm fairly sure that it shouldn't be warm enough in February to go out for a lunchtime walk without a coat on, even for someone like me who tends to shed layers rapidly after 10-15 minutes of brisk walking at any time, but I'm so delighted to have some sunshine and warmth, and it does my mental health so much good, that I almost don't mind.

I am very fortunate to work very close to the University Parks; a basic circuit of the Parks from my office is just under two miles, which is about as much of a walk as can reasonably be fitted into a lunch break. Occasionally, for a change, I go exploring into Mesoptamia (yes, it's really called that; a path between two branches of the Cherwell. Oxford is nothing if not deeply pretentious) and this week I tried crossing the bridge in the Parks and discovered a circuit on the other side of the river, out to the sports grounds and back via the Marston cycle path. Everything has been looking particularly lovely in the sunny weather, and there are snowdrops and crocuses and all the winter-flowering cherries have been coming into blossom.

A selection of the pictures I've been taking this week*:



And even though it's really still February, and only the end of week 6 of term, which means that I'm exhausted and still have two weeks of term to slog through and approximately fifteen million things to get done in them, when I came back from my walk yesterday I felt full of sunshiney joy and actually, properly happy, which is a complete turn-around from a couple of weeks ago when it felt like it had been overcast for ever and I was sunk so deep in gloom it felt like I might never climb out again.

*I tend to post pictures to @sadie_whitehart on instagram as I take them, mirrored to @white_hart on Twitter, if you want to see more of them and don't already follow me on those.