Early sun under heavy clouds and the Golden Valley

Yes, I know it is that view again, but then it is what I see every day and particularly every morning when I get up. I can tell the time by the angle of the shadows on the field called Ferney Close.

The same golden light also catches the old house on the far side of the Golden Valley, in a small hamlet called Montserrat. These lanes that run along both sides of the valley at that height were the old routes from Stroud to Cirencester, before the turnpike was constructed at the bottom of the valley. Before then the clays were too impassable for the coaches. The only other route was to ascend to the tops of the Cotswold hills where the outcropping carboniferous limestone produced dry surfaces.

As always I'm rather sad that the sharp image I uploaded has become soft in translation somewhere along today's digital highway.