Mists swirling down the Golden Valley

Before I went to bed just before midnight last night, I went outside the back door to look out at the views across the valley. I stood for a while, listening to the relative silence of the night, letting my eyes adjust to the dark sky, with puffy clouds obscuring the waning moon. A bat flew a few feet over my head circling round and round, probably hunting for moths attracted by the lights of the house. I see bats regularly, but hadn't noticed them so close to me before, and I was uplifted by their presence rather than frightened.

I began to notice that in the distance towards Brimscombe, up the Golden Valley, that there was low lying cloud seemingly held within the sides of the wooded slopes. The rain had been falling relentlessly yesterday and the atmosphere was thick with water vapour. There are often wispy mists rising up from the combes like bonfires in still wind. But then I realised that the mists tonight were moving down the valley towards me and I wondered whether they might be caused by a smouldering bonfire, or even smoke from a chimney. The trail of the mists spread at an even height, as they slipped down the valley like a glacier, rather like the effects of a temperature inversion.

I woke early this morning, as I had a 9am appointment and wanted a soak in a bath before I walked towards town. The inside of my study windows seemed cloaked by a thin mist of internal dew, so I moved to open and look out of the windows. Before me across the valley spread a complete cover of misty clouds at the same height as the ones I saw last night. I knew this phenomena would not last and might be blippable, so I grabbed my camera from my desk and started taking pictures.

I quickly decided to use a wider lens and after changing it, I spent three more minutes taking pictures before the mists had receded. My first shots had the mist obscuring everything beyond the trees in the foreground, at the bottom of the gardens. In front of my eyes, the mist then slowly rolled down the side valley of The Horns behind our garden, towards the main Golden Valley in front of the ridge of trees in the distance. You can just make out the misty remnants against the trees. I checked the exif info to find that only four minutes passed between my first and last images. This was taken at 0710.

The lesson appears to be that an early start has many hidden delights, particularly when the sun is involved, who's presence always cheers me up no end. Sadly, by the time I returned home to write this journal, the sun had disappeared again and another grey cloudy day now predominates.