After months of running to and from work in the dark I was thrilled to see the first glimmers of sunrise as I reached Fort William one morning last week.
I don't mind runnng in the dark as such - Running along in the pitch black (and often lashing rain and wind), hood up, music or radio on, head torch illuminating a small patch of ground in front of you ( hopefully enough to allow one to dodge deep puddles, slippy cow dung or cows themselves lying on the track) is strangely comforting. One feels cocooned by the darkness.If there is a good programme on radio 4 I can be transpoted to another world, leaving my legs to dutifully trudge through the miles. Whereas one might think that running 10 miles in the dark and cold would be physically hard there can be a sense of sensory deprivation; the rain and the wind (muffled by ear phones, hat and hood) presenting little in the way of auditory stimulation, and the intense blackness of the night rendering anything but the patch of rain studded light from the head torch invisible. Sometimes,but rarely in cloudy wet Lochaber the sky is clear - then one is dazzled by the moon and the stars, a beautiful aerial display marred only by the light pollution from Fort William. More often ones surroundings are a uniform black.
But now all that is about to change ! The days are rapidly getting longer. Yesterday on the run to work I coud clearly see the Ben Nevis through the gloom . Soon there will be proper daylight and birdsong - time to ditch the head phones and enjoy the dawn chorus!
In addition to this we have been having some lovely crisp cold weather recently .The top picture is from a photo I took on the road to Arisaig last week . Below that is another sketch of Ben Nevis fom Banavie
