Chasing Rainbows

East Linton and the Bass Rock from Traprain. I cycled to Haddington into a fierce Westerly headwind, late for a meeting, on a bike with no gears and thinking "well, at least it's dry and sunny." When I left the meeting, it was pouring (of course), and the tailwind payback I was looking forward to had petered out. Sigh.

Coming along the A199 ("the old A1," as everyone calls it, accurately, and with slight disbelief) I looked back to Haddington as the sun broke through. Those shots came out very like Northern's from today, but when I turned round again, the rainbows had started. Great! So, I chased them home along the little road by Traprain, looking for a decent view with some refracted colours. This one's taken about 5 miles on, just before the kamikaze descent into East Linton and back onto "the old A1" for home.

Rainbows are dead interesting aren't they? I'm not going to look anything up today, because I've thought about this a fair bit over the years and I can wax lyrical about rainbows. First off, you need the sun behind you to see a rainbow. The light bounces around inside the raindrops and comes back to your eyes at a certain angle - hence the curve of the rainbow. As you look straight ahead and up to the top of the rainbow, there'll be the same angle from the sun's rays passing over your head to your eye as there is as your eye looks along the rainbow : 42 degrees, which might explain Douglas Adams' Meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything. Or my age. Or nothing. If the planet wasn't in the way you'd get a complete circle. When the sun's low you get a higher rainbow.

And that means it's your rainbow. The person standing next to you is seeing a different rainbow from you, refracted into their eyes from their raindrops. Their green light might be from the same rain drop as your yellow, their orange might share a raindrop with your red. But you can't share a rainbow, it's yours.

Well, I suppose you could take a picture of it and stick it on t'interweb.

A day of getting on with things today. A struggle against the weather travelling west, followed by wonder and beauty on the return. There's hope, if you can just hang in there.