Once in a lifetime

Today was a long day, I had been up at 6am to go to the Wing and a Prayer Wild Bird and Owl Haven Open Day.  I was on face painting duty.  When I finally arrived home  the Hairy Hubby wanted to go to Asda, it was the last place I felt like going but I was so glad I did.

When we came out I saw the most panoramic sunset I have ever seen in my life.  Our Asda is next to Breydon Water and is very open all around so you get pretty much a 360 degree view of the sky.  I will not be able to do justice to what I saw but I will try.  The sun was low, almost gone.  A great burning ball on the horizon over the estuary, if you call it an estuary.  What was totally amazing was that the sunset covered the whole sky.  Everywhere I looked there was sunset, all around me and above me.  It was as if the world was on fire and I was in the middle of it, feeling very small.  The colours were incredible, peach, amber, purple, gold, pink, and an amazing aqua blue in addition to the classic blue sky.  There were dramatic cloud patterns, huge mountains in the distance, wispy streaks above me.  Swirls of colour shooting through the clouds as if by laser.  I felt as if I was inside a giant painted dome.  You can keep your Sistine Chapel I will take the natural world any day.  If I had painted it the only thing I would have added was a skein of geese flying across the sky but a lonely Gull sufficed.

I watched the sky driving home and the colours intensified as the sun slid away.  I knew that by the time we arrived home the show would be pretty much over.  As we drove across Rollesby and Ormsby Broads the colour had gone from most of the sky, just leaving the area around the sun a blazing orange and purple.  The water on Rollesby Broad was totally still and glowing gold and peach.

It was one of those experiences you just know is once in a lifetime, never to be repeated.  You could never plan to see something like that, it just finds you. 

By the time I ran back with my camera it was too late to do it justice