big skies over Barns Ness

Barns Ness, 12 October

I’m on the sofa alongside Raf, listening to the intense winds from Storm Éowyn battering the garden - and everything else around us as red weather warnings are currently in place across Scotland and Northern Ireland - and it felt like a good moment to write and to rewind to this walk, back in October. Because this kind of weather really unsettles me. Having experienced the environmental damage caused by Storm Arwen, the last time we had a red weather warning for wind back in November 2021, this weather worries me. I look on such storms differently now, understanding the destructive power of wind in a way that I didn't before. I’m sitting here wondering about the remaining trees at John Muir Country Park, wondering about the damage that is happening right now at Yellowcraig and at Links Wood, at Binning Wood, at Tentsmuir, at all these places we know and that took such a battering last time round.

So, perhaps this is a good point to distract myself with a blog post. I’m conscious of continuing this year’s posts with another rewind, but a combination of January’s weather and gloomy-skied weekends have left few opportunities for photos. But our days are beginning to stretch again, just slightly, but notably as we’re getting back to the car at around 5pm and it’s not quite dark. Those longer daylight walks (and the photo opportunities they bring) are coming.

This post takes us back to early October and a walk from Whitesands towards Torness, passing Barns Ness lighthouse. It was one of those days when the clouds were racing, and as we arrived at Whitesands to this sky below, it was clear that this was going to be an atmospheric walk.

As these photos perhaps suggest, we also spent a significant part of this walk waiting to get rained upon. There was a massive bank of cloud looming behind us, just inland, and we kept turning round to watch it, expecting it to head directly over us, and we really didn’t want to get caught in that downpour. Thankfully, the rain skirted the edge of the coast, blowing rain our way at points, but not with the deluge we anticipated. And it made for some dramatic and moody, low light photos.

These photos, above and below, were taken just six minutes apart, as the storm swept past us. The third photo below was taken six minutes later, clouds and light shifting as we watched the rain fall just inland before sweeping out, past Torness nuclear power station, and out to sea. The light glowed on this one giant cloud, as if it was being illuminated from within. Nature offering such beauty yet also, as today, the promise of destruction.

Barns Ness, East Lothian, 12 October 2024.

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