Happy New Year

We are back from Skye, and had a great time. It was a wonderful trip (apart from The Boy's car sickness). Father Christmas was kind to the family. I got a new winter outdoor sport coat. Waterproof, windproof, warm and light. I also got a new jumper and some Dalek cuff-links. The cuff-links are cool. I got out and did a bit of hill walking on Christmas day.

The best way to imagine what it was like is to see the photos. They will be up on Flickr shortly. There are a couple of panoramas that I stitched together using Autostitch. Below is one.



At 57 N (and a bit), the days are short. It's further north than the southern shores of Hudson Bay, about as far north as the northern tip of Newfoundland or the southern tip of Greenland. It would get light about 8:30 or 9:00 and then get dark about 3:30 or 4:00. So you really only had about 6 hours of usable daylight. Even then the sun didn't get very high in the sky and when it wasn't raining, the low sun created spectacular rainbows in the mist (which was perpetual). We saw probably two or three double rainbows. One rainbow was so bright, you could clearly see it in front of the hills in the background. Very much gave the illusion that it was touching the ground.

The best thing to do to get a feel for our holiday is browse the photos. A lot of them need digital manipulation to improve the color. Most of the scenic vistas are quite soft in appearance because of the constant mist and rain. I'm still learning how to get good results from the camera. I think my skies are getting better now that I consistently shoot -0.5Ev.

This was a great year overall. I'm looking forward to coming home soon though.