Scottish Summer
Rolling green meadows everywhere, dotted the biggest and most healthy cattle that I have ever seen, this is interleaved with flocks of moulting sheep, their winter coat hanging off in tatters as the prepare for the warmer weather not only that, but muscular and fit. There is absolutely no shortage of good grazing here.
But as I look up to the sky the sun is quickly blotted out by massive low hanging low clouds rolling in over the ocean and enveloping the hills and valleys, leaving massive strips of mist that look as if they are torn off as the clouds roll on inland. The weather pattern is strange here, very unlike the winter that one sees back home. There one can predict what the day may do, especially when its going to rain and for how long. Here there seems to be no end to the stream of clods as they roll in day after day.
The wind seems to slowly build in stages in the day and then one knows the rain will follow, but the rain is in squalls, and they push through at random intervals, but all day long, the heaviest are in the morning and then again in the afternoon and this is then interleaved with a continuous onslaught of rain all day.
The misty rain falls on the highlands heath, trickles down on to the ground forming little rivulet’s which in turn run into the streams and then into the swelling rivers as they build and build as they head to the Loch’s and ultimately the ocean, swelling and bursting their banks and taking whatever it can grab with it.
To the Scots this is summer, the odd day of a small trickle of sunlight is a massive reward in this harsh climate zone. A day of sun here and there over the next few months, that’s what they call summer.