By noon the cold front had moved through, leaving a polar maritime flow over Beenham and the rest of the UK. Stats: Overnight low 7C, high 12C, rainfall 6mm, thickness 548dam (00z).

Well, what a day! I awoke (at half five, too excited to get back to sleep) to a wonderful sunny morning, not a cloud in the sky....

The temperatures was rising quickly as I prepared a small host of boxes and bags, for today I was installing a PC in the visitor's centre (I named it Kenai - stop sniggering at the back!).

I left at ten past 8, with the sun by now turning slightly milky - still, it was pleasant enough, even though I knew there was a cold front lurking to the NW.... Along the B2231, A249, M20 and M26 I went, then onto an almost deserted M25. Drizzle started from leaden skies as I passed the "Surrey" marker, but it soon stopped. Not long after, whoosh! The skies opened and the rain poured down, as was the case as I nipped along the M4 and minor roads to Beenham.

There wasn't much sign of any wolves, though, as when I pulled up they'd sensibly taken shelter in their huts. After the routine business of installing the PC (and workstation for it), I left it displaying the "Welcome to the UKWCT" Intranet site and popped out to admire the wolves. By now, the rain had pretty much stopped, but there'd been a couple of hours of it.

So, first off I watched the European wolves, who were celebrating their 5th birthday today.

I happened to snap Alba doing something that wolves shouldn't really do - he had his tail curled over his back, something that the textbooks say is restricted to dogdom. Still, he obviously didn't read those books, and who am I to tell the alpha male he's wrong?

Not long after that, with a few bits of drizzle in the air, he decided to assert his dominance by mounting Lunca - it may look sexual, but I assure you it isn't! Latea is seen sucking up to him on the left - they were whining, snorting and generally putting on a fantastic show of dominance play.

By now, the other volunteers were back from their work, so I went back in and demonstrated the features of the PC. While I was doing that (predictably) the wolves started howling - bah, I always miss them! So, I zoomed out of the visitor's centre and legged it to the wolves, only to find I was at the wrong end of the enclosure. Sure enough, by the time I'd nipped over to the other side, they'd stopped.

You can't see it on these photos, but the skies were starting to clear, after being dull grey. The cold front had gone through, and some convective cumulus would form shortly....

So, with as much work done as could be expected with the sodden conditions, I had a carte blanche to see the wolves. I went down to the old couple, Kodiak and Kenai - much to my delight, Kenai trotted up and had a good sniff. She's still sporting her antibiotic spray on stuff, though:

After that, I had time to see Duma and Dakota - and like Kodiak and Kenai, they came over to investigate. I've got tons of photos of them all, but this one of Dakota is one of the nicer ones:

There was some more chat, then it was time to leave - and halfway round the M25 the heavens opened again, with some truly torrential downpours. The temperature had fallen from 12C to around 9C while I was at the Trust, and along the M25 it fell to 7C or so in the heavier rain - and there were some suspiciously large splodges of rain on the windscreen, suggesting I'd not have to go far up to see some of the white stuff. The rain eased slowly on the way back, but it's still raining lightly as I write this.

So, six out of six visits have had howling, four of six have had a cold front crossing. What will happen next time, I wonder?

(Note: my next visit is this Saturday, so I'd imagine it'll be another soggy day!)

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