By PIYUSH
Tucked in the heart of picture-perfect Banff National Park, the 50-hectare Moraine Lake has been nicknamed the ‘Twenty Dollar View’ because it once featured on the back of Canadian bank notes.
The largest of London’s Royal Parks at 2,500 acres, Richmond Park brings glorious swathes of nature to the capital. An important National Nature Reserve, it’s home to some of the UK’s oldest trees, endangered fungi species and, most famously, deer.
Among the most breathtaking ski locations on Earth, the town of Whitefish, Montana is known for its impressive alpine scenery – which really bursts into life in winter.
Nothing says winter wonderland quite like these fairy-tale ice castles in Midway, Utah. Unlike most ice sculptures, which are carved from blocks, artists create the organic forms using hundreds of thousands of icicles, which are stuck onto scaffolds, covered in water and allowed to grow in different shapes.
Standing at 1,519 feet (463m) tall, the distinctive Kirkjufell mountain becomes even more dramatically gorgeous when covered in snow. Located on the north coast of Iceland’s Snæfellsnes peninsula, its cone-shaped peak is known as a nunatak.
Banff glistens with picture-perfect lakes and Bow Lake is one of the prettiest. Dusted with a light sprinkling of snow and hugged by low-lying clouds in this ethereal shot, the lake – located on the Bow River in western Alberta – is the epitome of winter beauty.
Shrouded in mist and dusted with powdery snow, the majestic Baroque church that crowns Lake Bled’s waters is beautifully illuminated by a shaft of sunlight in this crisp wintery shot, with the Julian Alps providing a dramatic backdrop.
Covered with a thick layer of snow and shimmering with pockets of golden light, the village of Gokayama – a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Japan’s Shogawa River Valley – looks every bit the cosy alpine scene here.
In rural Wyoming and just south of Yellowstone, the 310,000-acre Grand Teton National Park becomes a model of alpine beauty in winter.