I shared these photos in a recent Steller story called ‘pink‘, and as I’m sitting at my desk on this last Friday of January, listening to the rain, on a day that has been endlessly grey, I thought I’d share these pink-toned skies and dramatic clouds here too. Just as a reminder that skies aren’t alway grey.
So, it’s a new year, and, let’s be honest, it’s been quite the first week in terms of news. But here we are, we made it through 2020 and it is a new year. While possibilities may feel a little lean as I write this on January 8 with the UK in another lockdown, my default mode tends to be focussed on the many things to be grateful for. I realise that’s easy to write and harder to live, but our worlds will open again, even if we have more months to wait to see the impact of the vaccine rollout. It feels hard to wrap your head round the scale of this process at the moment, right? So I’m personally taking 2021 a week at a time and trying not to think too far ahead, and I wanted to start this new year with a simple post: a walk down the coast – at North Berwick – in some lovely light, which perhaps looks like nothing much, but, in these locked down days, it feels like a lot.
There’s no denying the shift in the seasons at the moment. Last week, you could feel the evenings slip away as it seemed to be getting darker day by day. To be honest, I’m ready for autumn; I’m ready for cool weather and bracing beach walks, but I’m never ready to lose evening light. And this year, we’ve appreciated our evenings even more. Lockdown shifted perspective, right? We’ve appreciated just being outdoors, whether keeping it local with walks at the ash lagoons or along the sea front, or those nights of just getting in the car and escaping down the coast.
I feel I should start this post by wishing everyone a happy New Year – although I’m wondering if it’s still okay to write this at the close of the first week in January? A few days too late perhaps? But as this is my first post of 2017, it feels right to mark a new beginning. Let’s be honest, January isn’t the easiest of months – spring still feels a long way off – so when I was thinking about what to feature as the first post here, I realised that a little bit of escapism might be in order. Which brings me to a question: anyone else fancy packing their bags and heading to this chalet in the mountain village of Andermatt in the Swiss Alps?
Hello and welcome to Copperline. My name is Fiona Reid and this is my blog about coastal living in Scotland.