The orange glow that warms my soul

 

When I get up at stupid o'clock in the hope of a sunrise seeing an orange band on the eastern horizon is always a promising sign of good things to come. We have had unprecedented amounts of rain over the last couple of months with hardly a moments break in the cloudy grey skies.

The weather predictions for Saturday morning had forecast clear skies at sunrise and then a wave of clouds was due to sweep in from the West. I've been pretty fed up of the wet weather and its been making me feel down in the dumps. I really wanted to get some sun on my face to brighten my mood up.

I decided to return to Caldicot Pill again and try my luck again, as on my last visit that solar stranger - the sun, failed to really make an appearance for me.

I arrived about  twenty minutes before sunrise and stared across from Wales to the Eastern shores of the Severn Estuary. The horizon was dominated by the fiery embers of the soon to be rising sun. Above it the eastern sky was a clear blue with some wispy reddy pink tinged clouds. 

My view was dominated by the Prince of Wales Bridge that spanned the Severn and led to England. The tide was on the turn but it would not reach its peak for several hours, so there was a huge expanse of wet mud that was streaked by channels of water and sandbanks revealed by the receded waters, and the pre-dawn light reflected off any wet surface that caught it.

There was hardly a breath of wind and the conditions for flying my DJI Air 2S drone were perfect. 

With great anticipation I waited for the sun. One advantage when flying the drone is  you can get up high above the terrain and see the rising sun earlier than when you are stuck with a view from the ground.

At 6.18 am the sun broke above the eastern horizon. Up it rose in a blaze of fire and warmth. I love the orange glow, it warms my soul and makes me feel good.

Orange light shone across the estuary turning the world into a scene of contrasting orange and black. This was a sweet spot for my drones camera as within a matter of minutes the sunlight would be so bright the camera settings would not be able to cope and the exposure would white out. 

From the ground I had a different perspective. My view was full of the architecture of the bridge. Between a gap in the legs of the bridge the sun rose into view and looked amazing.

The minutes passed and the sun rose up above the bridge and light beams burst between the legs of the bridge and the pylons creating shadows across the estuarine water and mud. The sun reflected as a fireball in the channel between the two bridges.

I thanked the heavens for being kind to me and enjoyed basking in the warm sunlight of daybreak.

I felt energised for the day and once the sun had reached its zenith I packed up and turned my back and walked away with a spring in my step and a a happy song beating in my heart.