We also had a big wildfire, on Dartmoor. We've had a wet winter but the last week in the Westcountry has been bone dry with a strong (and vicious) east wind. The bracken and heather from last year is tinder-dry, so it doesn't take much to get it going, and gorse burns well too.

Braemar holds the record for the coldest recorded temperature in the U.K., -27.2C, achieved twice, once in 1895 and once in 1982. The reason for the very cold nights is that the location is in a frost pocket, which means it's surrounded by hills down which cold air from high up sinks into the valley where the village is. Scottish glens are often frost pocket candidates. There are several notable ones in England, at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, at Benson in Oxfordshire and at Shawbury in Shropshire. To get a really cold night in a frost pocket you need little or no wind, a clear night and, preferably, snow on the ground. It helps if there's a stagnating mass of cold air over the country, which occasionally happens in winter anticyclones centred over Scandinavia or Eastern Europe.