High summer in Chynów - storms, fruit and exercise.

This is a lovely photograph, taken around the corner from my działka, a few minutes after Saturday's sunset. Looking north from Chynów. Good to see local people exercising - quite a few cyclists, roller-bladers and Nordic walkers out at this time of day. 

Taken from the same place, at the same time - but with a totally different lens. Instead of a telephoto zoom at 300mm, a super-wide-angle zoom at 10mm. The red glow of the horizon a few minutes after sunset is all you get when zoomed in tight - but  rise above it, and then the sky gradually turns a deep blue. Nearly three weeks after the year's latest sunset, the day has lost just seven minutes in the evening; hardly noticeable - yet.

Friday's storm caught me briefly; there was trouble on the Radom line (it's still not right since the 28 June reopening); I jumped onto a Góra Kalwaria train that arrived at W-wa Jeziorki when a Radom train was due, which meant changing trains at Ustanówek (below). By the time I reached the shelter at the end of the platform, the downpour began - mercifully it turned into a regular rainfall by the time I emerged from the pedestrian tunnel in Chynów, and got home to the działka just slightly wet.

On Sunday the sun disappeared behind a bank of cloud on the north-western horizon, but a far more ominous one was heaving in from the south-east. Flashes of lightning occurring often; as I turned the corner, the downdraft from the rainstorm suddenly whipped up, tearing leaves off the trees. A good day's walking, 15,000 paces (compensating for a shortage of paces on the rainy Friday).

Taken from nearly the same point as the top photo, but looking the other way. I set off with the wrong camera; I had hoped to do some extreme zooms of the Warsaw skyline with my Nikon Coolpix P900. Sadly, the skyscrapers were hardly visible. When the storm approached, I was armed with the P900 (which does not do wide-angle well) and my phone. Neither is optimised for extracting subtlety from the heavens, nor capable of taking .NEF (RAW) files to work on in Photoshop for an accurate rendition of what I saw and felt. So - an approximation.

I got home from my walk about ten minutes before the heavens really opened. In the meanwhile, the sweet cherries that haven't been picked or eaten by the birds have rotted and fallen; the sour cherry season is getting into full swing, and I've been picking blackcurrants to make more nalewki. Current score - 11 jars of various size, enough for about three litres, once the secondary fermentation has been carried out. Plenty more to come - the classic wiśniówka next! It should also be a good year for blackberries, though the raspberries coming through are meagre and dry.

[Update 14 July - it's been like Groundhog Day this week; I wake up, open the roller blinds, the sun's shining in a cloudless sky. As the day goes on, the clouds build up to the east. As five o'clock comes along, the lid goes down on the laptop, I stroll out for blackcurrants. It's hot. I'm sweating as I pick the berries. To the east, the increasingly frequent claps of thunder from an ever-darker sky - to the west, the sun continues to shine, untroubled to cloud. A contest between east and west. Wind is blowing from the high-pressure area to the low-pressure area - a good sign, because it means the downdraft, caused by large volumes of water falling out of the clouds, is still a long way off. As I finish picking the blackcurrants, the wind starts to veer. The thunder and lightning become almost continuous; as I start climbing the gentle slope up towards my działka, there's no mistaking the downdraft. By seven, the storm reaches Jakubowizna. Lights on - it's dark outside. And yet sunset's nearly two hours away. Repeat the following day.]

Update 17 July - as I cross the tracks to pick blackcurrants, I'm passed by a group of six cyclists. Nice bikes, and cracking performance! No one whistling show-tunes here!

This time last year:
Summer wet and dry
[A pattern is emerging!]

This time three years ago:
Rainy summer Warsaw moods

This time six years ago:
Marathon stroll along the Vistula

This time seven years ago:
Complaining about the lack of a river crossing between Siekierki and Góra Kalwaria! 

This time eight years ago:
S2 update 

This time nine years ago:
Progress on S2 bypass - photos from the air

This time 11 years ago:
Up Śnieżnica

This time 14 years ago:
July continues glum (2007 - yet another rainy summer)