As we are drawing to the close of the London 2012 Olympics and our athletes have done so well gaining all the medals I thought I would go for Gold here in the Rhins of Galloway!
Gold in a different sort of way though!
My Gold here is the Gold of the sunsets and I am using this blog to show you some of my pictures of typical Rhins of Galloway skies and sunsets.
We do have the most amazing landscape here and, together with our clear skies it is an amazing place to be. The sky is so blue and clear during the day and when the sun is going down it just comes alive with colour. The picture above shows the sunset from only a few nights ago (August 2012) and is the view across the water from the North Rhins with Ireland in view and the Mull of Kintyre – stunning, don’t you think?
I really can understand why the BBC chose to film “2000 acres of sky “ here. We really do have 2000 acres of sky.
This is the view from the cliff tops near Kirklauchline Cottage, on a clear day you can see right down to the Mull of Galloway and beyond to the Isle of Man. So blue and so clear.
This weekend we are watching our Dark Skies here in the Rhins, when the sun goes down and the blazing colour fades we have clear starry skies. We are now able to watch the latest meteor shower, the Perseid meteor shower with over 60 meteors an hour! Last night we were outside on the decking, it was so clear we could see the Milky way, numerous Satellites and the ISS. At around 11.30 the Meteors started flying around, it was amazing! They are due tonight too but it is a little cloudier, still it won’t stop us heading outside to see if we can catch them.
The Galloway Forest is one of the best places for star gazing in the world. It was the first Dark Sky Park in the UK, as announced by the International Dark Sky Association.
Useful Dark Sky web sites:
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/darkskygalloway
http://www.gallowayastro.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-17988825
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Travel-g186513-c127667/Dumfries:United-Kingdom:Official.Dark.Sky.Park.Galloway.Forest.html
http://www.darkskyscotland.org.uk/
So there you have our little bit of Gold in the Rhins of Galloway in South West Scotland. Well done to all our London 2012 Athletes you have done your country proud. Fingers crossed for meteors tonight too.