The changing view - part 1

Having moved house recently I'm still missing the views I had previously. These were all taken in the last week or so before I left Orkney.

 

 

I do have some pretty nice views from my new place too, thank goodness!

Clear skies

The mirrie dancers (or merry dancers, northern lights or aurora borealis) have been quite active recently. Unfortunately the weather has conspired against getting good views of them a lot of the time, with cloudy skies and snowstorms, but Friday was a beautiful evening, albeit extremely cold, and I got some great views.

I moved around a bit taking photos, but it was so slippery with a very hard frost on top of a snowfall, that I was scared of falling and breaking my camera, so after a while I stationed myself at the door of the house.

Although it was mostly just a huge arc of colour, later in the evening there was a little more activity.

Eventually there was also some pinky colour, as well as the green, but it was fading by then, and the sky was also starting to cloud over.

Earlier it had been a beautifully clear, starry sky.

Orion over my house

Saturday morning was beautiful too - a hard frost, beautiful cloud formations, lots of seals on the skerries and eider ducks calling from the shore.

 I'm really going to miss this special spot when I move.

Christmas Day seals

It was such a gorgeous morning, we headed off down to the beach.

P.S. It doesn't matter how many times I arrange the photos and the spacing between them - this sortware has a mind of its own and just does its own thing no matter what I do, so I'm going to give up on trying to arrange the photos nicely on the page!

Daylight

I just checked the sunrise and sunset times for Ayr and Orkney and was surprised at how similar they are - it really feels like it's getting light an hour later in the morning and getting dark at least an hour earlier at night. Of course, that could also have something to do with the fact that it's windy, wet and cloudy here in Orkney whereas when I left Ayr we had had a week of lovely cold crisp winter days with clear skies...

Sunrise:
Ayr 8.42am Orkney 9am

Sunset:
Ayr 3.46pm Orkney 3.14pm

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Sunrise lighting up Arran's snowy hills

There was a lovely delicate pink sunrise this morning over Arran's snowy hills.

It felt quite strange walking on the beach because the sand was frozen.