Wednesday started early at our peak district cottages with Blue scratching at the kitchen door at about 5am.  Assumed he needed a quick trip in the garden so donned wellies and overcoat and went out into a howling blizzard.  Could not believe how much snow there was.  Back inside I had just got the dogs settled and went into the office when the power went off.  This sent all the computers beeping and this sent Blue back to scratching the door.  Decided this is what must have spooked him in the first place.  Had to find the emergency torch and when I found that and got hold of Blue I realised I had lost Smudge.  Knew he had to be inside and found he had sneaked into the office when i was trying to find my way out.  Was a little while before they settled and I could go back to bed although I couldn’t get back to sleep.  When we got up we could see that there was a blizzard outside and we went to check the drive as we had two cottages departing.  Both at the top and the bottom of the drive the snow had drifted and as soon as we walked into the field we could feel the power of the wind.  I found it difficult to see as the snow was blowing horizontally but it was obvious we would need Andrew to dig us out and for the first time in bad weather the road was very difficult to drive on and as the morning went on it got a lot worse. We got a call from James at Haddon Grove Cottages who was stuck with some other cars near our entrance as by mid morning the snow had drifted across the road.  Chris went down and with some other drivers helped some cars that had gone off the road.  James came up for a coffee then set off back home to Sheffield via Over Haddon.  He had got to his cottages without too much of a problem as this side of Sheffield had not been hit so hard and neither had Bakewell.  We knew the A6 and A515 had already been closed as had the Buxton-Leek road and Snake Pass.  By lunchtime there were some abandoned cars along the road.  Some cars were turning round but others tried and persevered with some more ending up stuck or off the road.  Chris reported the situation to the council but during the course of the day neither a gritter nor a snowplough was to be seen.  It wasn’t until gone 3pm that Andrew could get to us and when the drive was cleared the cottages finally departed although we did give them the option of staying another night.  For the cottages already in most made the most of just relaxing and some walked round the fields to see what was happening and we did acquire a snowman!  I also checked our store cupboard just in case anyone needed some extra food!  Should have had a WI committee meeting in the evening but this was cancelled.  We measured 7 inches of snow on our patio table and because of the wind snow was banked up against walls but was patchy in other places.  The news did say that Derbyshire had been worst hit and that it had been the worst April snow for 30 years!  Chris has posted some pictures on Facebook but click here for some that I took.