Thermal

Growing tired of being slothful (ironic, no?) and wasting weekend mornings in bed, I ventured up at half five last Sunday morning and took the short drive to East Aquhorthies stone circle.

Dawn was due to break at just after 7 and when I parked the car with half an hour to spare, the sky was already lightening. A short walk up the farm track and I was at the 4000 year old prehistoric site and sorted out my tripod and camera. I am surprised by how un-spooky it is arriving at these places in the dark – you would think it would be creepy being in the middle of nowhere in the early hours, but I would definitely rather be there than walking the streets of a city at that time.

Nonetheless I could feel eyes boring in to my back as I waited for the sun to crest the horizon. Slowly turning I found myself face to face with a cow wearing the most human ‘what the f…. heck are you doing here?’ expression I have ever seen on an animal. Satisfied I didn’t want any of it’s grass it went back to chewing.

Dawn broke and I started firing off the camera. It’s amazing how fast the sun comes up once it’s made up its mind, and the light was continually changing as it advanced across the fields towards me. Pinks, oranges, reds and yellow all came through with varying intensity. Then, in less than 20 minutes, it was gone. The sun slipped above the clouds and wasn’t seen again for the rest of the day.

But I saw it:

More photos at my Stone Circle website, and you can see this photo larger on my Flickr page.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 10th, 2009 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Photos, Stones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.