The days between Christmas and New Year provide the opportunity to watch old films and eat rather too much (no doubt in an attempt to keep the calorie in-take up to Christmas and New Year levels). And I’m very partial to both old films and eating.
However the “between-holiday” days do also provide a chance to do other things.
A couple of years ago I spent the “between-holiday” days in Tromso attempting to photograph the northern lights. That wasn’t a great success – it rained throughout the time I was there, and I went down with pneumonia immediately afterwards.
This year I opted to take the opportunity to go north again, this time as far as our house on Shetland. The weather offered every possible option – there was snow on the ground when I arrived, and over the next few days I saw gale force winds, heavy rain, fog – and a little bit of sunshine too. Although Shetland is capable of offering all of these over the course of a week a pretty much any time of the year. In between the showers I managed to get out to walk on a number of the beaches around the south end of Shetland - and to take a few sunset pictures too.
In Tromso, I needed to get used to there being nothing brighter than twilight in the middle of the day. On Shetland in December sunrise was just after 9 AM, and sunset shortly afterwards at about 3 PM. The plus is that you can get you sunset pictures and still get home for afternoon tea.
Shetland December 2010 |