Dawn run.......

The temperature in my wee cottage plummeted during the night. I got up too early. The central heating hadn't fired up. Radiators were still cold, and so was all my running gear. I reset the control switch for it to fire a bit earlier in future - then went back to bed until things warmed up. It was 6.30 when I re-emerged from under the covers and after a quick (ish) cup of coffee nearly 7am before stepping out into an arctic wind to set my Garmin and get under way.  Gosh it was cold. Both my neighbours' cars had frosted windscreens and grass was crunchy underfoot through frozen fields. The thinnest sliver of a moon hung in a cloudless sky, a celestial icon over the luminous landscape of breaking dawn.

This morning's dawn run....   (Click to enlarge)

  I recognized the fluted notes of blackbirds, and a robin chirruped as I ran past Clough Hall cottages, but I'd no idea what the other early morning songsters were. Certainly I wasn't one of them, not today in a wind chill temperature of 23ºF. I was on a second circuit of Castle Hill when the sun peeped over the horizon. I forgot to note what time it was, possibly around 7.25am, when the glowing red ball spread a veneer of palest pink over the frozen landscape. A perfect work of art, a burning bush experience that lifted my spirits and sent me home rejoicing - but something very difficult to explain to sceptics who don't, or wont, understand why people run....