Boreray at Dawn.

Today, we were up at 3:30 a.m. to march up to The Gap, a climb of 500 feet in three quarters of a mile, to Blip the sunrise over Boreray. Of course, again it didn't really happen. The Blip was taken sometime before dawn and a few of us did manage pictures with some colour in the sky. We were standing at the northern edge of Hirta on the rim of the volcanic crater from which the archipelago is formed. Boreray, four miles across the water, is on the rim at the opposite side of the crater; it must have been an awesome sight when it blew.

The planned routine is to get up in time to find somewhere to catch the early morning light; back to the village for breakfast and the rest of the night's sleep; then back out for the evening light and the sunset. Of course, this is somewhat reliant on the weather. With dismal overcast skies all day, there were no golden hours, sunrise or sunset. Maybe tomorrow. At this time of year, there is not a lot in the way of darkness and the regime of late evenings and early mornings did not leave a lot of time for sleep; however, the young jet-lagged American lassie managed to fritter away half the day in the Land of Nod while she caught up with the rest of us.

During the afternoon, we wandered up the hill to capture the sweep of the Street with the row of cottages behind it (first extra); bizarrely,I was reminded of the magnificent sweeping crescents of Bath, a delusion only experienced by myself. It was possible to choose a vantage point that hid the nearly empty water tank from view, I elected to include it in the picture as a significant part of my mission is to document the islands as they are, though the composition allows for it to be easily cloned out. The second extra is a panorama of the army base showing both the existing accommodation and the building site for the new.

After dinner, we recreated one of the classic tourist postcard shots (third extra) since the evening light wasn't going to offer anything spectacular. It was fun with nine photographers each trying to get a similar shot without including one another in their composition. As far as I am aware, there were no fallings out and we all managed to achieve a reasonable picture.

I've just posted yesterday's, "Dun." and "Falls of Clyde" from Sunday the first.