My time since mid July

[MapleRidge]

Good day everyone...

Those of you who followed a post by Alexandra would have the inside scoop on my activities the past few weeks.

My wife Sandy and I spent a week on tour in Scotland from July 19 - 27th, then we closed the holiday off with 3 days in Holmes Chapel where we were hosted by Alexandra and Darren. We had a great opportunity to meet Mark and Stuart and their spouses on the Sunday and a solar morning on the 29th before having a tour of the Cheshire countryside that afternoon. The images of the group and the solar images were posted by Alexandra last week.

We arrived home and have had continuous blue skies and temps pushing 30C each day (but I'd take some of the excess rain that the UK had when we left)...drought conditions here now!

I pulled a few images out of the trip to share, some have more of a direct solar connection, others are just a few of my favorite sites

To start, we flew out of Toronto around 6pm local time, and once in the air we flew through a lot of cumulous clouds, a few were active thunder storms. In the pics below the sun was getting low but highlighted these cumulonimbus clouds towering over the cloud deck below:

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The final rays of sun were cut off as the sun sank below the cloud deck:

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I booked a window seat with the hopes of catching any sign of the northern lights as we flew into darkness over the north Atlantic. The aurora never appeared, but we had a constant show of noctilucent clouds until the sun rose:

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The above images were all through the little airplane window with my cell phone camera

One of the greatest parts of our tour was the opportunity to visit and walk through many of the old castles and buildings that had their original over 1,000 years ago. Some have been restored/partially restored and others are only ruins now. Below are a few of my favorites, starting with the restored Eilean Donan castle:

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Next is Falkirk Palace which is partially restored and surrounded by beautiful gardens:

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Another ruined castle is Castle Urquhart which has sat on the banks of Loch Ness since its earliest stages that date back 2,000 years ago. As a bonus, we had a light rain move in from the Loch and it produced a fog-bow with the castle in the foreground:

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Old, historic churches are every bit a part of the landscape as the castles, and we had a part day at St. Andrews where the ruined Cathedral was shrouded in mist of the North Sea:

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I'll close out the pics with Edinburgh Castle which is really too big to justify with a single photo! The view was partially obscured as the bleachers for the Royal Tattoo were being assembled:

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A week was hardly enough time to see a fraction of the country and you'd need many more weeks to do justice to each of England, Ireland, and Wales...but it did give a great introduction to the country and some of the background of my forefathers that left Scotland for Canada back in the early 1830's.

As I said, we returned to sun and I am working on processing solar images from Thursday through Sunday. Activity has been pretty quiet and I spent most of my time testing other scope/filter combos...I'll post the better images for the session as soon as I can.

Brian

[xn44]

Very interesting! Awesome images!

[Starry Jack]

Sign me up!!! And loved the cloud photos. Scotland is on our bucket list.

[Carbon60]

An excellent set of images, Brian.

Stu.

[ffellah]

I love the pictures you posted, Brian ! They bring back memories, Lisa and I spent out honeymoon in Scotland... we started with the castle in Edinburgh, toured a number of other castles and ended in St. Andrews.

Franco

[Montana]

Lovely to see these images Brian, I really like the rainbow over Urquhart and of course the noctilucent clouds

Happy memories, we missed you after you left.

We booked our silver wedding anniversary lodge today for 2021 at Kylesku (our honeymoon suite), that is a relief, at least it was available and I am happy now.

Alexandra

[marktownley]

Lovely set of images Brian, and also lovely to meet you and Sandy

[MAURITS]

Very fine memories with these pictures for yours.

[gabrieli]

Hi, Brian

The first two cloudscapes are worth getting lost in.
The ruins remind me of the amazing time I had in Frnce (Paris and nearby cities) visiting historic ruins.
Thanks for posting.

Lou

[MapleRidge]

Thanks everyone for your comments on the vacation images...I didn't want to over whelm the 'solar' site but we are muck like extended family I figured a few would be ok

The scenery and people we met on tour in Scotland were all beyond expectations, and my highlight was to meet the kind folks that I've interacted with on this site for the past 7 1/2 years. Always great to meet those who make it to NEAF each spring, and now the circle has been opened to Alexandra, Mark, and Stuart as well. It was a bonus to share Sunday with Sandy having a chance to meet everyone as well.

Brian