After trying to get some decent photographs for a few days, I got up on Thursday morning and had my usual cup of tea at about 6am before leaving for my walk. At one point while briefly perusing the news on the internet, I glanced over the monitor and noticed that the sea in the bay and the sky were presenting the kind of photo-opportunity that I had been craving – but I was still in my flat!

I think it happens mainly before the sun has visibly risen, but it is rising from behind the town and creates that ‘red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning’ effect. This in turn makes the sea and part of the sky go all sorts of purple/mauve colours and they appear to blend into one and it looks absolutely gorgeous.

Unfortunately, by the time I had raced down to the seafront with my camera about fifteen minutes later, the opportunity had gone.

I was trying to find some sort of purpose to my walks alongside the obvious benefits – mental stamina, fitness, health and a good start to the day, so the photograph quest had become kind of important to me.

I decided that ‘early start boot camp’ needed to evolve into ‘even earlier start boot camp’. On Friday I left even earlier, but to no avail. The photographs were OK, but nothing special. Here is the gallery for Thursday and Friday –

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On Saturday morning the weather teased me a little by providing a tiny glimpse of redness on the water, but again it was nothing to write home about. I hung around for a little longer than usual and thoroughly enjoyed myself, but the pictures were just average – here are Saturday’s photographs –

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On Sunday I decided to give myself a rest from the early start. But we were blessed with the arrival of the most amazing summery weather (considering it is early March) so I took the camera out in the daytime, had a long walk and loitered around in the sun for some time, getting the rays on my skin and boosting my vitamin D levels and the start of the 2012 suntan.

Here is Saturday’s gallery –

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I also decided to have a complete break from the early start and the walk today (Monday) although I got up at 7am anyway. I’ve enjoyed this experiment and learnt a few lessons and reminded myself what it feels like to be highly motivated and energised in the mornings.

I’ve enjoyed taking some photographs and posting them online. I’m trying to make a decision about how I should proceed in the long term, because I don’t always want to be walking in semi-darkness now that the sunny mornings are back, but at the same time I want to stay disciplined and sometimes have to do things when I would rather not. I’ll keep the blog updated with how I choose to proceed.

If nothing else, I hope that anyone who may come across these posts is inspired to attempt some ‘lifestyle experiments’ of their own and to push themselves a little harder to see what they can discover about themselves and the things they have around them.

As always, all comments are welcomed, except spam of course 😉