Early Morning Friends

The vast limitless Orcadian summer sky was sadly missing earlier today when we set off once more on a madness 5:30am tour of the countryside.*
Any initial brightness was slowly overtaken by a encapsulating gloom of low cloud.

Under this grey shroud , the landscape was painted with a palette of muted greens, yellows, and misty blues with the silver of the lochs producing welcome highlights.

At some point on the road, we stopped to eat a banana, and a field of cattle came down to the wall to watch. These in the blip are just a selection, there are actually three times as many strung along the fence to the right, all inquisitively peering at us.

I put on my 'talking to the cattle' voice, and we had a one sided conversation which seemed to go well until his Lordship broke the spell by saying to me in much too loud a voice, "you might be eating one of them next week". How insensitive was that remark?
I assured them that nothing could be further from the truth, I never eat my friends and I considered them to be my friends this morning.

Now having showered and breakfasted and read a little, the cloud has lifted and the sun is making a manful attempt at coming out to play. It looks like we may get the big sky back again.

* The roads in Orkney are what Edinburgh and the Lothians should aspire to- smooth, well maintained with not one pothole to be found.
It's a joy to cycle on them.