Rainbowed

The slow route to Peebles & back

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We took a wee family trip south last week to try and get the feeling we were on holiday. Not our whole tribe, not far south and not by the fastest route: like slow-cooking it pays to take your time and use the finest natural ingredients to get delicious results. My family are used to going places with me at the wheel. Unless a journey has been very specifically promoted as a photo jaunt their tolerance for stopping is now very low, and so I need to choose only a few pull-overs and each one needs to get results.

In a previous life I taught folk to fly paragliders from hills so this first stop was an easy win, on the basis it was where my wife Christine and I used to park to walk up and fly from the hill above, and we should “take a wee look” for nostalgic reasons. Newlands Kirk is just round that bend, but there’s also a more ancient kirk hidden on the downstream side of the bridge which I’ve visited a few times in the past.

One morning a couple of winters ago I went out for a sunrise at Harperrig on the north side of the Pentlands, after a snow storm followed by a strong hoar frost. Alone and unfettered I was pulled from one beautiful vista to the next, until I stood looking over this scene on the opposite side of this same bridge. The ancient kirkyard is hidden behind the trees in the middle of the frame. The branches were hung with the delicate fruit of ice crystals that had formed in the freezing fog overnight.

It was a unique day completed with a view looking north towards the Pentland Hills with lights from farmhouses and cottages glowing in the twilight. The air was exceptionally still and I vividly remember the sound of sheep in the field below me in the gloom, crunching on a frosted crop. If that photography journey sounds very self-indulgent you should bear in mind that our shortest day in winter is only 7 hours from sunrise to sunset - not even a full shift.

Back on our family trip to Peebles our next stop was only a couple of miles away when our son Calum spotted a rainbow to the left of the road. There was somewhere to pull over straight away and so began the creation of a new family meme. As I grabbed my camera from the back seat and paused at the road edge I shouted “IT’S LOCAL” before running across the road and framing this shot.

It’s not that great a photo and I only include it to illustrate our family dynamics - I do strange things and they take the piss out of me, mercilessly. For the rest of the day one or other of them, wife or child, at any pause in conversation would shout “IT’S LOCAL” and then chortling to one another, run a few steps forwards and hold up an imaginary camera.

What I was trying to say was that the rainbow was visible in the rain immediately in front of us, which meant it could easily disappear if the rain eased, or the light was cut from behind us. I was really just telling myself these things, and if you look at the image you can see the shadow speeding up the hill, and killing that “local” rainbow less than 10 seconds after this shot.

The route back home took us through the hills in the rain, surrounded by vibrant Autumn colours. The bracken was at peak dynamic rustiness and the heather still had some burnished flower heads to compliment the tapestry. Sometimes the best Autumn colours are seen when the sky is overcast and the light is diffused allowing the foliage to show its range of brightness, colours and vibrancy. I use a polarising filter a lot in Autumn to cut down reflections on wet surfaces.

I really loved catching the fern fronds in the bottom left showing the variety of changing colours in one clump. You can see the water looks dark with all the reflective glare removed by the polarising filter. If you use a polariser remember to give it a twist every time you reframe a shot and experiment to find the optimum effect, as it changes depending on the direction of light.

For our last photo opportunity I chose this viewpoint in the Moorfoot Hills which gets a fantastic view north, west and east. Edinburgh could be seen in the distance with Salisbury Crags and the Old Town glinting in sunlight but we could see it was soon to be shrouded in heavy rain approaching along the Pentlands.

a very long view of Edinburgh

There was the very occasional sunlit spot on the landscape and I could see a speck of blue sky to our south west where the clouds were streaming from. It burst through in a perfect position to catch it along the hillside and then as it passed it created a brilliant example of….a LOCAL rainbow.

Which rapidly became less local as the clouds wheeched away to the north east into East Lothian. In the shot below Edinburgh would be visible to the left if it wasn’t “pishin doon” there at the time.

I love being able to see the whole shebang of cloud, rain, rainbow and I managed to catch the sheep lorry in this shot as the bracken got a blast of sunlight to turn its vibrancy dial up to 11.

Arriving back into the city our timing was perfect for catching the tail end of a rainbow over Salisbury Crags and Arthur’s Seat.

Enjoy the Autumn colours while you can, and in any weather you get. Those trees will soon be bare.