Fife's Uluru

Today the clouds have ruled supreme. Nacreous clouds have been visible over most of Scotland today with their oil-film colours most pronounced when the sun is low.

I have seen blips of them from Dingwall to Edinburgh. Nacreous clouds, (or 'mother-of-pearl' clouds, or 'polar stratospheric clouds') are exceptionally high clouds.

They form in the stratosphere at heights of between 50,000-80,000 ft above the earth's surface. Compare that to what are normally our highest clouds - cirrus, which forms in the troposphere between 20 and 30 thousand feet up.

I saw them and I photographed them both this morning and this evening, but nothing really spectacular enough to blip.

I wanted to get away from the town to somewhere where I had a view of the sky in all directions so that led to me going up Fife's Lomond Hills at sunset. Here you see the last red rays of the sun striking East Lomond (aka Falkland Hill) viewed from close to West Lomond. The red glow reminded me of the classic views that you see in travel guides to Australia - Uluru (aka Ayer's Rock). So here then is Fife's Uluru