Now that the clocks have gone back, it’s easier to get out of work in time for an indescribably beautiful, peaceful run at sunset.

This isn’t my photo, I didn’t take my phone, but these are the colours I saw. Then it went peach as I went past those straight trees. Magic. And different every day. Isn’t planet earth clever in providing us unlimited entertainment?

Tonight I ran from about 7:15pm to 8:30pm, through the woods to Elton (popped in on a colleague who was just back from the pub!) and back through Fotheringhay. Don’t you just love it when you can feel the warmth of the trees as you pass by them? And the whisper of a faint breeze whooshing past your Buff-covered ears?

I’d been looking for inspirational photos for the front section of Trail Running magazine today and twice, when I looked left to the sunset, I felt like my brain clicked a picture of the scene for those pages. Number 1: A Turner-esque swirl of faded dusky blue sky muddled with two bright pink brushstrokes of cloud swooshing off into the sky. Number 2: A bristle of tall, pencil-straight trees, no leaves yet, so the soft peach of sunset made a remember-forever backdrop behind. The pink made them stand out spectacularly and I kept snapping my head away so I could turn back again and again to renew the scene in my mind. Amaze balls.

I was also doing what Lynden from The Costal Challenge in Costa Rica does. Listening to the wildlife and really looking at everything. I noticed the lichen on the bridge by Elton lock and a heron glancing off the water, and a funny-looking tree just out of Warmington Mill. And the birds. At sunset they go mad! Who needs an iPod when you’re listening to their calls and tweets and yowls. Loved it.

This is one of my best times of day to run in spring. What’s yours?