It was still full dark when I left…it will be a while before dawn and I coincide again on the drive back from the north. I miss those intimate moments when the first rays of the sun creep over a horizon strewn with ancient stone… and no-one else is in sight. This morning, there was just the blackness and the vague, sulphurous haze on the edge of vision that marks the towns and villages, glimpsed as you pass over the wide, empty moorlands.

On the roads I travel, there is no other light until I pass through the sleeping habitations of man…only that which I bring with me. As I left the hilltops, the trees and hedgerows shelter the road and I was struck by the difference made by the headlights of the car.With the lights on full beam I can see a fair distance ahead, but the blackness beyond…