Part 2, Mid-evening Midsummer Live

are celebrating the longest day of the year in the far north-west of

Scotland at the standing stones on the Isle of Lewis and there is more

daylight here on midsummer's day than almost anywhere else in

Britain. These enormous stones have looked out over the Atlantic for

5000 years and today, they attract visitors from far and wide. There

are kids come at Druids in the middle of the circle, all manner of

people and they will be here until the sunset 10:20pm. Before that,

here is what is coming up on Midsummer Live. I've been finding

out about the rare and beautiful clouds that can only be seen in

summer. Quite ethereal, ghostlike, like angels. We will show you why

midsummer matters so much for our wildlife with Arctic terns, the

perpetual summer Bird, live from the Isle of May. The underwater words --

world awakened by the midsummer warmth and light. And we will find

out if round the world cyclist Mark Beaumont can reach the West Coast in

time for sunset. Earlier in the evening we asked you to send us your

best Scottish sunset photos and we will bring you the best of those

later on. It is not too late to join in. Tweet your photos. Or go to our

website. Judith Ralston is in Glasgow and is watching the forecast

for us. What do you reckon? Is there any chance this guys behind us will

clear and we will see the sun setting? -- disguise behind it all

clear? I am living in hope. I am sure you have seen hints of

brightness across Lewis at the moment but it is a cloudy affair and

it looks like staying that way until eastern Scotland at the moment,

particularly on the east coast. We are looking at fine sunshine across

the Isle of May. You can see the likes of eastern borders, Angus and

Aberdeenshire, some fine sunsets 10:23pm this evening. There is lots

to look forward to. Stay with us on get to. It took me about a day. It

does not put off people who make a special trip here at midsummer.

Cecilia and Alex have come from Australia. Why have you come so far?

To escape the Australian winter and the shortest day of the year in

Australia. You have come to the other side of the world. What sort

of daylight length do you get in Australia? Very short. Sunset would

be around 5pm. Get out of work and it is dark already so it is nice to

be here. Lots of light, thanks for coming all this way. All the way

from Australia! That is a fair old journey and it is not just humans

that like to celebrate midsummer. At this time of year the landscape is

alive with wildlife. At Edinburgh's botanic Garden, Hermione is helping

to discover just how much wildlife can be found there.

Thanks, the BioBlitz people have been busy all over the gardens and

after just three hours we are already up at 112 species. We are

here at one of the six ponds in the botanic Gardens. You are a wetland

ecologist. It's midsummer at the time to be looking into our ponds

for wildlife question might Absolutely, it is the perfect --

perfect time to investigate biodiversity. The water gets a

chance to warm up and everything gets going. We have a lot of things

reproducing. You can find adults and the offspring. You have had a lot of

help from volunteers. Including these two. It looks exciting here.

Tell us about some of the things you have fished out? In this tank we

have a female smooth newt and one of the babies as well. This is one of

the pond's top predators. We have also got met of more phasing

tadpoles that are starting to sprout legs. What does finding it's like

this tell you about the pond? diverse. They rely on different

things to eat so it shows we have a healthy pond. Do you think it has

caught up from the cold spring? would say so. Our species county is

quite high. A lot of the larval forms are a bit more stunted than we

would expect at this time, so maybe a bit more slow. This tray is

teeming with life. You have something that looks interesting in

a jar? This is an adult diving beetle. They are able to move and

fly to different ponds but we have found the larval form today as well

and they are predatory. The larval form feeds through its tail on the

surface of the water and they have been jaws. They grab hold of

tadpoles and digests them. They are fierce. It sounds gruesome. In the

trachea there is just so many different things -- in the tray

here. What is that? We had a leech on screen. That was rams horn Smale,

her before in the pond. We have a water boatman in front of it. It is

disappearing off! Everything is being camera shy. See if we can get

the leech again. I love it. sorts of things, really busy.

what you have found, what do you think the count, the additional

count of the BioBlitz might be? did we get to, boys? 20.

brilliant. All the insects are important food source for lots ofs

other animals like bats. The critical thing for bats is there

going to be lots of insects around so they can build themselves up. So

today. But overall 2013 has been pretty challenging weather-wise.

Hibernating animals like bats woke up to a nasty shock. One of the

coldest spring is on record. When they emerge from winter roosts, bats

need to fill up on insects straightaway. If it is cold and food

is scarce they can starve. Hessilhead Wildlife Rescue Centre

Eun Ayrshire received a record number of spring casualties this

year. I am not surprised -- and not surprisingly, many of them were

malnourished bats. Dave O'Reilly has the job of preparing them to go back

into the wild. I went along to see how a female pipistrelle bat was

doing. She is pretty lively. Yes, she has woken up with the heat in

here. She is quite active. She looks like she's trembling almost. Is that

normal? What they need to do when they first wake up is generate body

heat to take off. If you give her a chance she would fly around the

room. Usually they are quite laid-back animals. How do we know if

she is ready? What we do is weigh her, check her wait and see if she's

ready to go. Put her in head first. Headfirst. She's nearly six grams,

which is quite good. She was only for Mac programmes when she came in

and she should be between five and six grams, so she has put on a

couple of grams. What about her wings? Will she be all right flying?

We will check her to make sure there are no small holes to stop are

flying and see what type of back she is. You can see the veins running

along their, it is a common bit --, pipistrelle. What do you feed them

at the hospital? We give the meal worms. Oh, yes, instantly.She's

quite hungry. How many of these mealworms will she eat in a day?

to 12, compared to 2000 midges in a night it is easier to give them ten

mealworms. I would not fancy catching 2000 bridges to try to feed

her! Are you confident she is ready to go back in the wild? She should

fly OK, she is strong, she is a good weight, she is eating well and she

should go easily. Bats must be released back into the same area

they were rescued from. Our bat was picked up Culzean Castle on the

Ayrshire coast. The old buildings, mature trees and ornamental lakes

here make up a perfect bat habitat. Heather Lowther is a ranger

naturalist in the country park equipped with her detector, she

surveys the bat population throughout the summer. It was

Heather that originally found the female pipistrelle when it flew

exhausted into the castle's restaurant. Let me reunite you with

your friend. This should be a good spot to release her then? This is

perfect, around here is perfect. We know we have a number of pipistrelle

roosts in the buildings round here so she will be fine. What are the

bats doing the summer? Just now they have the big maternity roosts so the

mums get together and have babies and later in August the babies will

fly off so they have different roosts at different times of year.

Do you think this bat will join a started to emerge. Heather's

detector picked up their ultrasonic clicks. This is it. It was the

perfect time to release our bat. She is already giving out signals,

working out what is going on around her. That is brilliant! She is right

above her head -- our heads, can you see her wings? She is coming back.

Oh, fantastic! You don't get better than that, it was amazing. Very

is one of more than 1000 across the British Isles. Scotland is littered

with them. Just across the bay there are at least two of the stone

circles but why were these sites bills? What did our ancestors used

them for? Dougie has been meeting the experts to find out the latest

Today, with all our modern technology, many others have lost

our connection to nature. -- many of us have lost our connection to

nature. But 5000 years ago when these stones went up our ancestors'

lives would have been intricately linked with the natural world. These

stones are clearly carefully positioned. They must have had some

meaning. But what was it? Perhaps other prehistoric sites can give us

a clue. Clive Ruggles is Britain's only professor of archaeologist --

of archeoastronomy, the study of how our ancestors understood the sky. He

has brought me to burial tombs at Culloden, near Inverness. Beautiful

dry stone work and you have to imagine it being continued up and

the whole thing being roofed over and we have a passage going off in

this direction to get in and out. That would have been covered, so it

was still in its original state you would be crawling through it.

is the significance of the passageway? The significant thing is

when you look along the passage and it is aligned with another one of

these cairns, just over there, it is aligned in the direction of where

the sun sets at midwinter. The shortest day of the year. It is the

similar story at the most studied stone circle, Stonehenge, built

around the same time as Callanish. Researchers have recently completed

the most accurate scan Stonehenge ever done. They have plotted every

lump on and on the Stones' surfaces, down to half a millimetre. It has

revealed just how important midwinter and midsummer were to its

builders. The stones that framed the solstices have been given a lot more

attention than others. The latest scan allows us to look in lots of

detail. This is stone 56, the tallest surviving on site. It forms

one half of the great trilithon which stands at the end in a

horseshoe. It would have had a pair that stood here next to it. You can

see that very straight side. It has been incredibly carefully shaped to

be a very straight line, and it would have formed one side of the

frame through which the midwinter sun would have been viewed from the

middle of the stone circle. proof that Stonehenge was built to

align with the movements of the sun is overwhelming. And here at

Callanish, the evidence points to an alignment of a different kind. The

49 stones are arranged in a slightly offset cross shape. Two of the four

Rose lead out of the circle. One points roughly East and the other

West. That one there is pretty much juice South. -- you South. However,

the Northern Avenue is slightly skewed. Some scholars believe that

is the key to understanding this whole monument. Why would that

Avenue be slightly offset? It is thought it points to a rare and

lunar event. The cycle of the moon is complex. Every 18 and a half

years, a lunar standstill occurs. This is when the moon, in a certain

phase of its cycle, barely seems to make it above the horizon. One

theory is that all this was built to track that lunar event. When the

moon is doing its special date once every 18.6 years, you will see the

moon rising very low on the horizon, just skimming above it about two

degrees, dipping down below that rocky outcrop and then coming out

again and seeming to fill the stone circle. But not everyone buys this

theory. Professor Bill Ruggles has his doubts. It could be people were

interested in looking at the full moon closest to the June solstice,

around that time. If people were looking at it then they may have

spotted the moon then and maybe aligned that. But I do not think

people were making accurate observations of the moon over a

generation or two to get the alignment exactly right. Said the

debate continues about what alignment Callanish has if any. What

Clive is sure of, however, is that the carefully constructed monuments

did have ritual significance. are not places where people were

living, for example. They were either congregating here for special

occasions, or they were places to bury the dead. So these are the

things that have sacred significance. With no written

records and archaeology only revealing tantalising clues, we can

never be certain why our ancestors chose to build this magnificent

monument. These stones will hold the secrets.

If only the stones could speak. We have extremely rare footage of a

lunar standstill films in 2006 by cameraman Jim Hope. It is shot from

here on Callanish. There are no stones in the foreground. They were

behind the cameraman. You can just see the moon skimming along the

curves of the mountain 's. That is known as the sleeping giant. You can

see it there, very slowly skimming over the top. It finally goes down

and disappears behind the mountain. Absolutely fantastic. The bad news,

you will not see that again until 2024. Ellie has gone for a wander to

the shore. Have you got your feet wet? I have my boots on and the tide

is out so I am doing OK but I have come down to the short to show you

it is not just live on land that takes advantage of these long days.

Down here I can give you an example of marine life that does that, too.

This is algae. People often call this blood Iraq that it is in fact

not to crack. -- bladderwrack, but it is knotted wrack. Hermione now

picks up the story. For top underwater cameraman Doug

Anderson, summer meets Lamlash Bay in the Isle of Arran. He learned to

guys here as a boy and pays a return visit every year. -- he learnt

diving. This is a special place thanks to the work of people like

these. Lamlash Bay has become a place where underwater life can

recover and flourish. There is no better time to experience it than

midsummer. The effect of summer in the sea in Scotland is profound. It

is marked by a bloom, which is literally that. The ocean goes from

a slate grey colour to vibrant green as the phytoplankton multiply

exponentially in number. That is a start. That really is the battery

for all life underwater on the West Coast of Scotland. I love coming

back here and snorkelling. It is the way I explored this area when I was

a boy, and there is something simple and beautiful about exploring

particularly a temperate region like this with just a mask and snorkel.

It is very quiet and you can cover a lot of area. Tiny lines mean

jellyfish the size of your thumbnail. By the end of summer, you

can get them the size of dustbin lids, with tentacles may be 30 or 40

feet long. They are just extraordinary. Watching them pulls

against the light in late summer. They are ill feeding machines. You

certainly do not want to get stung by them. It is really super fun to

start exploring the kelp forests. The kelp fronds form the trunks of

the trees and then plays out into these canopy. Just like a forest,

you can get underneath it as a free diver and explore the forest floor.

It is very beautiful. The shafts of light come through and illuminate

parts of it in the darkness. An amazing little story to play out

here. Common to see octopus in Lamlash Bay, and if you get a good

one, one that kind of accepts you, if you get your approach right when

you are diving, and it's easy as a piece of furniture rather than a

threat, then they carry on doing what they do. Mostly what they are

after all these little squat lobsters. They call along the bottom

and get into cracks and crevices and tried to find these things. It is

great fun watching the hunt. Also in these rocky ledges it is a great

place to find cuckoo wrasse. They are a real Scottish treat

underwater. They are and as your blue and the females are a kind of

ochre orange colour. The interesting thing about them in Scotland is they

are one of arts exchange fish. A female will be female for years and

then we'll decide to be a mail and turn from this orange colour into

this blue and will get much bigger Seeing these in the shallows is

really hopeful. Maybe not for me but for my children there might be a

point where they can come back and enjoy this place and, not in the

know-take zone, but close by, catch themselves cot for supper in the way

that I did when I was a boy. -- cod. Just less than an hour until sunset

and the pipes are playing in the background. You'll Scottish sunset

photographs have been coming in. We will be looking at some later in the

evening. How do you capture the best sunset? Our photographer Colin is

joining us now. What do we need to capture a sunset? When it starts

getting a little darker like this I would say you need a tripod and a

shutter release. You have a fancy camera. Is that important? Ann not

really. You could do it with a phone, any kind of camera.

This is a pretty special place for you? It is different every time you

come over. You never get the same picture twice. Is it important for

you to get some sort of foreground in your photographs? Yes.We are

looking at some of your photographs and that is truly spectacular. That

looks like a glass ball. What are you thinking about when you are

making photographs like that? trying to get a different take on

the place, get it from a different angle. Thank you for joining us. I

am intrigued. An incredible thing. Ellie, you are back and your feet

dry. I have brought you a memento. Matches my hair! If you are out and

about with your camera, there is one special thing to look out for in

midsummer after the sun has set. I There is a strange spectacle in our

summer skies. It has a band of dedicated followers. John Rowlands

is one of them. He is scanning the heavens for a mysterious serial

phenomenon. Something he first caught a glimpse of as a young man.

I was waking up in the middle of the night in the summer when I was a

teenager and I had a north facing window. I would notice strange old

and wisps on the northern horizon, quite striking and unusual. --

Golden wisps. I found out they were noctilucent clouds. Noctilucent

clouds only appear after sunset. They are the highest and most

elusive clouds we have, forming 50 miles above the Earth, beyond the

stuff... Professor Nick Mitchell from the University of after studies

the outer layers of the atmosphere, where these ethereal clouds form. To

show me why they can only see scene -- be seen at night, he has come up

with something impressive. It has taken every ounce of his scientific

inflatable I have ever seen. It is impressive. So you have been hard at

work with the cotton wool? Remark a work of creative genius! This is a

fundamental trait in to illustrate how it is. -- this is a fun

illustration to demonstrate how it is. These fluffy clouds represent

the lower atmosphere clouds. These are a mile above the surface of the

Earth. Much higher up is our noctilucent clouds, a thin layer of

cloud. To mimic the sunset from my perspective, Nick is going to use a

light to recreate the motion of the sun across the sky. During the

daytime, the sun is shining down on the surface of the Earth,

illuminating our fluffy cloud in the lower atmosphere. The noctilucent

clouds present during the daytime but this time -- but the sun is so

bright we cannot see it. Slowly, the lower atmosphere cloud moves into

shadow, the sun goes down below the horizon from your perspectives. The

noctilucent cloud is still little brightly by the sun. It is all about

the height difference. The noctilucent cloud is so much

higher, the sun still illuminates it long after the sun has set. They are

wonderful things. They are ideal post-pub entertainment. For the

stagger home? Yes.For these clouds to form, both water vapour and dust

particles must be present in the atmosphere and it has to be

extremely cold. 50 miles up, the atmosphere is actually at its

coldest in the summer with temperatures as low as minus 130

Celsius. That is why we only see noctilucent clouds is that you have

to be up after midnight. The total number of hours that I lose in a

season from the end of May until the beginning of August is about 120

hours, the equivalent of an entire week's worth of sleep that is lost.

That part is very difficult to cope with. But for John, the chance to

capture their beauty keeps drawing -- if serial. They take on strange

forms. They have strange wave formations in them. They range from

red to orange to white, to a colour called Electric blue. They appear

never heard of them before but they look incredible. We are in a good

spot to see them. Any further south, you can't see them and any further

north, the sun never gets low enough. We are in the sweet spot

right here? We are in the sweet spot and it is a good time to see them

because we are getting lots of photos of them. We have this one of

the sun setting over the sea from Allen, in Murray. This is from

Stephen Hagan, who spotted noctilucent clouds in Glasgow.

Douglas Cooper took this shot, it shows the clouds over Bute. Really

amazing. I never come back that late. We are going to go back to

Edinburgh's botanic garden where Hermione is helping to record as

many species as possible. What are the scores on the doors this

evening? Well, we are now up to a rather impressive 209 species. But

as the light fades on the longest day of the year that is exactly when

some of our more mysterious winged creatures come out. I am joined by

Barry Prater from Butterfly Conservation. You are going to be

moth trapping in the Gardens tonight? Yes, we are. We will use a

bright light to attract moths and some will fall into the container

below and we'll stay there safely until we opened it up and

investigate what they are and add them to the BioBlitz numbers.

midsummer, is it a good time for moth numbers? Yes, it is warm. Moths

are cold-blooded animals and they are more active when it is warm. The

summer months are better for them than the winter. Tonight's moth

trapping, could it add a significant number of species to the BioBlitz

count? I think it could, yes. Across Britain we have about 2500 species

of moss. Not all in Scotland, but there are a lot here but your

average suburban garden providing there are trees and plants will have

about 150 different species visiting each year or more which amazes most

people. The contents of this track will be set up tomorrow and -- will

be counted tomorrow and added to the BioBlitz. You set up a trip trap

yesterday, let's see what you got? Full of moss. What are these?This

is a poplar hawk moth. It is harmless, it does not feed itself.

Only its caterpillar feeds. That is stunning, fantastic. You have a

bright yellow one? Why Bobby that is a brimstone moth. It is named after

the colour yellow. We have a peppered moth. A black and white

colour, very interesting because in the days when the air in cities were

polluted with salt, a black form evolved and that lack form could sit

on tree trunks and become lodged and be safe from predatory birds. Now,

they are all like that. Air quality is a lot better. Having cast your

eye over this, how many different species do you think you have got in

this trap? 50, is my guess.50! Moth new! If you had a similar number

from tonight's trap, it will be a fantastic addition to the BioBlitz.

All the BioBlitz volunteers will be recording from now until six o'clock

tomorrow evening and if you want to go to the total count, go to our

website, bbc.co.uk/midsummerlive. If you were in bed when things

started going bump in the night you might be worried but for one man it

is music to his ears. Especially at For naturalist Al Jackson, summer is

the best time of year. -- Bill Jackson. The light is perfect for

painting. It is ideal for photography. But above all it is in

the summer that Bill's unusual launcher moves back into his house.

-- lodger. I thought they were a bit heavy for mice, they went bump bump

bump on the panels upstairs. Then bump bump bump over the bathroom.

Then banging around the slopes at the end of the house. Then the next

thing is sliding down roof panels. I knew then I was onto a good thing.

We had a pine marten resident. Then a few months later the kits sound,

which when referred -- when we first heard the kits was unbelievable. She

is coming in feed them, suckling the kits above the bathroom. Fixed up

cameras all over the place, these little camera traps. There she is.

That is her way in and out of the den. At the flat roof, across the

windowsill, up the pipes, into this, which runs into the main roof and up

through ventilator. She will sit there with her paws over the end

watching us. She watches everything. She does not like crows. I thought,

you crafty bisom. That is what she does. She has three spots on her bib

which are noted -- noticeable, even more so when she is wet. When she is

where they stand out strongly. The mail still comes back and he shows

up about 10:30pm. She has had her kits, she will be into breeding

again and he will be intimating, certainly. He demolishes all the

peanuts which she has left. She is now into black treacle and bananas.

If any pine marten people want to experience seeing a pine marten at

enjoying herself, cut up half a banana and watch the antics. She

loves it. The secret is not to just put them out in a lump. Spread them

and rub them into the logs, which means she will be there for a while.

Sometimes there will be 20 or 30 birds out there feeding and they

will up and off in a flash. Especially the woodpecker. The

woodpecker, when feeding, the minute she looks up she is on the roof and

that is the sign for get ready, get have a home like she has got. It is

well insulated, lovely and warm, food is provided for her. The burn

is there if she wants a drink. There is times when you really think, I've

been sitting here four days watching this and all she is doing is looking

back at me and thinking, he is still there! Hopefully, before the end of

this month is out, we will have the kits out on that long and prancing

around the lawn with her. It will be nice if she acts normal and they

follow her down and we get the whole family party. That would be

something. The latest news from Bill is that the kits are still in the

nest but he has just sent us this photo showing the mother taking some

food back for the kits. It looks like she has got all in the picture.

The kits are about six weeks old and growing fast so she has got her work

cut out just to keep them fed. course, there are people who have

travelled massive distances to be here for some from across Scotland,

Europe and the world. But none of them have managed to travel as far

as the Arctic tern. These birds cover 22,000 miles travelling all

the way from the Antarctic to spend summer in one of Britain's biggest

seabird colonies in the Isle of May where it looks like they are

attacking Catriona Shearer! Are you all right there? My goodness!

think so! I am just about OK. I have got Mike at and had up and I really

do need me because there are 200 pairs of nesting Arctic terns here

on the island. Most of which seems to be dive-bombingknow me, as you

can see. This is normal behaviour because they are being protective

parents. The nests are either side of the pathway, hence they are

dive-bombingknow me. These birds go to extreme lengths to enjoy long

days. They love the sun and they have the longest migratory route of

any animal. Unsurprising lay, they would like to experience two some of

the year, first in the southern hemisphere and then in the north,

sometimes as far as the Arctic and they filed. -- they find themselves

on the Isle of May. Dave Pickett is the reserve manager here and he has

to ensure the terns's stay is as pleasant as possible. They are

feisty, aren't they? They are giving you a good going over, they are

working as a team. Their nests are depressions in the sand and that is

where they have their eggs and chicks. We saw some earlier, they

hatched this morning. They are vulnerable to predators? That is

right. Their biggest problem is the polls on the island and they will

swoop in. They are all around the terns, they will take the eggs and

chicks easily and stop them from breeding successfully. You have been

putting measures in praise to keep them safe from the polls. What have

you been doing? We manage the visitors, we do it tern watches and

put in nesting platforms which form a mosaic within the red -- within

the vegetation. We put in garden canes, which act like barrage

balloons and they protect the terns from gulls swooping in. How has that

been working? It has been successful. We have twice as many

pairs on the island this year. So far, so good. Is it true that the

same bird comes back with the same partner? With the same place

question mark There is a percentage of the divorce rate but generally

they meet up with the same partner in the same colony. That is great

news about the numbers and we are both wearing hats because we need

them, everyone is subjected to it but the Arctic terns what is

enjoying what is left on the Isle of May of the sunlight and we hope you

are too. It is not only birds who are nesting

at midsummer. Earlier today a couple came to Callanish for the most

special day of their lives. They travelled all the way from

Switzerland to get married amongst the stones.

These are my hand. Congratulations. Why did you get

choose to get married on midsummer 's day? We love special days for

special occasions and we choose to come here because we were here two

years ago, where we exchanged rings for the first time. We wanted a

special place for this marriage. It was a surprise for my wife. She did

not know until today that we would hear. Incredible. What did you think

when you found out? I thought it was the right place to say yes. I am

sorry about the weather but it has a moving atmosphere. It is Scottish

weather. Congratulations. We wish them the best of luck.

Earlier this evening, we saw a round the world adventure and cyclist set

out to chase the sun around Scotland. It is 120 miles against

hills and headwind. Can he finish the journey in time to see the

sunset on Sandwich Bay in the West? I am just over halfway on my journey

East to West on the top of Scotland. I have cycled tens of thousands of

miles all over the world. But I have never been to this part of my

homeland before. No wonder it is a draw for tourists. The landscape

here is just stunning. It is 5:30pm. Well over 12 hours on the go. It has

been tougher cycling than I expected, with some stops to meet

people and also as I have gone West, finding tougher and tougher hills

and the headwind. This section of the route also has some massive

inlets. They are very scenic, but they do while on my journey.

Fortunately for me, this is a new road. It is nine miles on the old

road am so I am grateful for any help. I am still on target to reach

Sandwich Bay -- Sandwood Bay on target. It is the workplace of

Nicola. Hello, how are you? Good. Nicola is a painter. She was born in

South Africa and moved here 12 years ago. Her landscape paintings are

inspired by the quality of light in this remote part of Scotland. This

is the first time I have ever been through this part of the world. It

was spectacular. I imagine that would be quite hard to capture.

really, because it is so beautiful and so strikingly contrasting, the

light and shadow and the interplay of everything. It is so inspiring

that you just want to brush off and see what you can do. Having such

long days in the summer, what is that like as an artist? You do like

the play of light. It is a paradise to work in. Every day has a

different scene. Dramatic lighting, spotlights, rainbows, the light

dancing on the water. It is nonstop. It was lovely spending time in

Nicola 's studio but I am behind schedule. 30 miles to go. The sun is

dropping fast. I am starting to push my luck. But this is beautiful

cycling. There is no one else on the roads and the light is stunning. But

there is a sting in the tail. The road runs out for under half miles

before Sandwood Bay. It is now only 20 minutes until sunset. This is not

what I need. The first couple of miles are only just possible on my

road bike. But the last two are only possible on foot. It is going to be

tight. There is the son. It is dipping on the horizon. Just made

back to working up in the tent this morning and crawling out to see

sunrise. It was a long time ago. The last three or four macro hours on

the bike would just breathtaking. A whole new world for me, and I will

definitely come back and explore more. I reckon the best time to see

it is right now, in the middle of hour until the sunsets here under

this. The longest day and only half an

hour to go. It is wonderful how light it is how late. Stay with us

online. You can watch us as we approach sunset on our webpage.