Monday 28th October - After the storm - rainbows and a godwit

Number One Son and I went out in search of weather after the Big Storm. We ended up at Pulborough Brooks, the RSPB place.

 

 

There definitely had been a storm; when I woke up, just before dawn, the wind was making busy and enthusiastic blustering noises round about. I looked out of the window and could make out the oak tree at the bottom of the garden pretending to be a Van Gogh painting - all swirly and twirly in the half-light.

 

By lunchtime, it seemed like a normal, slightly windy day. The sun was out, the sky was blue...    

 

And the clouds were big and determined. They meant business, as we were to discover.

Look again at the picture above; everywhere we went, we saw rainbows. After admiring that rainbow, we carried on round and went into one of the hides. Within a short time the sky turned properly black overhead and we were incarcerated for about ten minutes by real, steely grey rain thundering down relentlessly.

When it stopped, two of the volunteers laden with Serious Telescopes appeared. I was delighted to hear them exclaiming over a godwit that they could just make out at the far side of the water-logged field in front of us. How perfect. A godwit. (Not sure if it was lesser or greater or spotted or black-backed - not sure if I care, actually). They radioed their find in to "Base" who promised to report and log it. They even let us look through their telescope, so I, too, have seen a godwit.

It was getting on in the day so we made our way back up. At one point it was raining and sunny at the same time, with rainbows around every corner, appearing in the gaps between trees, brightening and fading, and brightening again.

Number One Son managed to track down a geocache that we failed to find last time we were here. It was hidden in a snail shell, and the shell hidden in the sort of place that snails like to hide in. I'm not sure if you can make out the tiny scroll tucked inside the shell for recording your D and the date that you found it. Luckily I keep a pair of tweezers in the car (!) so we were able to extract it.

Then he replaced the shell, and we went home to make cakes.

Yoghurt cake with apple, which was delicious.
A new version of Farmhouse Cake from www.recipesfromacornishkitchen.blogspot.com, made with whisky and water instead of milk, twice as much dried fruit, a peeled and chopped apple, and half and half muscovado and soft brown sugar, and mixed spice and nutmeg which is apparently still too warm to try properly. Verdict will be available tomorrow.
A Good Day.

Saturday 29th September - A week of silver linings

This week has been the rainiest for quite a while.

On Tuesday I drove to Newick and spent some time waiting around. It had rained heavily a couple of times as I made my way along the A272, but had stopped  by the time I arrived. I had to spend quite a while waiting around, and ended up just standing on the green, warmed by the sun, just enjoying the view.




picture copied from the village website: http://www.newick.net/

Looking in one direction, the sky was a deep, luminous blue, as blue as in the photograph above. Everything seemed pin-sharp in the aftermath of the rain. Looking the other way, the sky was a dark slatey grey colour. The rain clouds were deep and strong with a glowering intensity. The contrast was so striking. The two weather-worlds, and my experiences of them so close, so different. At one moment I had been driving through blinding spray, wipers at full speed, and now I was standing in a world that seemed brand new, calm, still, waiting.

Wednesday was another day of sudden heavy showers. The clouds were a paler grey, but highlighted with brilliant shining borders where they overlapped. Way up high, a skein of geese flew south, in a beautiful undulating V-shape. Further along, the clouds were thinner, revealing ragged patches of sky of the palest, palest clear blue.

Cumulus mediocris and congestus over Swifts Creek, Australia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud

This picture isn't anything to do with this post. I was looking for pictures of geese flying in a V formation against a grey sky, and found this instead.  It is worth looking at a full screen version.

I have found the beauty of the skies, and the dramatic changes in the quality of the light to be tremendously encouraging and uplifting in my travels around the county this week