What's with these these dark evenings?

After an exciting day ploughing through 6 weeks of post, sorting out e-mails and doing the washing I needed a walk . In Edinburgh you can go out for a walk at 6:30pm knowing it wil be light until after 10. This was taken at about 8:30pm when we thought we would be mown down by a combine harvester . It was dark and we had not taken  a torch.