At the end of a perfect day

I had a look at the figures for yesterday and these confirm that it was pretty much the perfect day: daytime high of 31, night-time low of 21.  It might have got a bit cooler than that before dawn this morning, but again we've had another perfect day.  It started divinely: we get a good distant view from this flat of the top half of Warren Hill, but at a crystal-clear dawn this morning the hill was semi-covered by a layer of ground-level mist. 

This then covered the hill completely before within minutes starting to disappear altogether as the sun rose into the clear blue sky.  Any day other than Sunday and I'd have seen the mist at close quarters, so it seemed almost a shame not to ride over to see it - but instead I settled for observing it out of the dining room window and having a more leisurely start to the day, taking the only horse which I rode today out three hours later (pictured below).  And it's been a lovely day throughout: some cloud appearing during the day but dispersing again before dusk, which was almost as special as the dawn had been, as you can see in the final two shots.

Mind you, I am aware that such conditions are not ubiquitous in the British Isles at present: it's not just that Tramore was off on Friday and, although racing there today, doing so on a heavy track and in the rain; I note that the ground at Warwick, where they are racing on Tuesday, is currently good to soft, soft in places.  Warwick's only 100 miles from here, a bit less as the crow would fly, and I regard it as one of our local tracks, but as I found out when we went to Chepstow the other day, one doesn't have to head too far westwards to find that this spell of perfect weather is far from nationwide.

The good thing is that the Jockey Club clearly saw this lovely weather coming.  The past couple of years they've left odd bits of the Heath for hay, including the middle of Bury Hill, one of our regular haunts.  The grass there has been waiting and waiting and waiting to be cut, but of course it's not been easy to find the necessary dry week for the grass to be cut, dried and allowed to turn into hay, and then baled.  There were a few consecutive fine days three weeks ago or so, but that was clearly too uncertain a window.  So we've got to the third week of August with the hay still unmade, which is remarkable.

Anyway, they clearly knew what was coming because the grass was finally cut on Wednesday afternoon and is now drying very nicely (as you can see in the third picture - look beyond the head of Ollie, the horse to the right of my mount Silken Thoughts, and there it is).  So that's worked well.  I've found out, of course that this perfect weather won't last beyond today, but that's no huge surprise as days like the past two really are rare treasures; but, even so, it's still forecast to be low to mid 20s and dry for the next few days, so that's certainly much better than nearly all the days we've had so far this year, so we'll keep enjoying the conditions.