I just love this time of year - not for the weather particularly, although a glorious summer's day in England is wonderful - no, I just love the fact that it barely seems to get dark. The photo below was taken at 10.00 pm yesterday evening, looking north-west-ish. The sky still holds a glimmer of light and, indeed, when I popped out again at just gone 11.00 pm there was still the faintest suggestion of light even then. The sky starts lightening again for the dawn just before 4.00 am. I love, love, love it and it makes the drab, dreary, dark days of mid-winter seem a reasonable price to pay for the long, long summer daylight.
Apparently in the Shetland Islands it never really gets dark at this time of year and they refer to the long hours of daylight as the 'simmer dim'. P and I did go there once some years ago but as we basically only had one day in Lerwick (we sailed overnight both there and back from Aberdeen) we didn't really get to experience the 'simmer dim'. Six years ago we spent a week in Reykjavik in early July and there the light was amazing - broad daylight still at 11.30 pm, and light enough to read a book indoors without a light on at 2.30 am - fabulous.
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