Blue True Dream of Sky

For the last couple of days we have had drab monotone grey skies and drizzly dismal weather. As if in sympathy I’ve been under the weather myself, having come down with the same disgusting cold that the rest of the family suffered over the weekend. Some relief today on the weather front at least: after another grey start, the skies cleared and we had a mild and sunny afternoon.

When I got home from work Angela’s parents were here and Angela and Ben were waiting to take me out for a walk. Ben was on his push-bike and really enjoyed freewheeling over the humps and hollows of the Lots.

This is the Kent channel taken from the cliff-top path near to the Cove. As you can see: plenty of blue sky, a few fluffy cumulus, but above them some strips of parallel clouds with a fairly well defined top edge and a more ragged bottom edge.

I’ve looked in my book, I’ve tried Google Images, but I can’t decide whether these are cirrostratus or not. Can anybody help me out?

As you may have gathered, I’m quite keen on clouds at the moment, but I’m not averse to a clear blue sky – not that we see them in this neck of the woods very often. They do make an excellent backdrop, for instance to this blackthorn blossom:

It looks like there’s a lichen growing on the blackthorn.

Yes, look – like little grey corals. I’m even more ill-informed about lichens then I am about clouds. But…I did borrow ‘Lichen’ from the Collins New Naturalist series from the library last week. So let me see……