Rainbows

5pm, Thursday before Easter, the porter comes round the department and kicks everyone out. Its early, its still light, so I figure I can take the long way home along the river. Although its raining a bit, there's a brightness on the horizon where the sun in setting.

I used to hate cycling in the rain, so much so that if there was any rain in sight I'd get the bus. That all changed when I got invited round to a girl's house for dinner one day and it was raining and the only way to get there was by bike. Then I discovered it wasn't that bad after all.

So I set off, and down the country lanes to Galgate, through the farms and over to The Stork pub, and then onto the riverside path between fields of baby lambs and lots of lively birds enjoying the early spring sunshine.

Then with the sun low on my left I saw ahead to my right, at about 1 o' clock, part of a rainbow. I've always got time for rainbows, so I stopped. I looked back to my right, at about 5 o clock, and there was the other end of it. Two ends of a rainbow - two pots of pure gold coloured all the colours of - quite literally - the rainbow. I looked for a secondary bow, the one that forms outside the first bow. It wasn't that bright but there it was on the right-hand side, a small section of secondary bow. But something wasn't right. Secondary bows have the colours reversed - red on the inside, blue to the outside. This was red on the outside, like the main bow. And the angle was wrong. Secondary bows are concentric with the main bow. This was heading down at an angle to intersect the main bow at the horizon.

I looked behind me to the sun and found the answer. Two suns in the sunset. What I saw was a reflection rainbow, caused by the reflected sun on the water shining up and creating a bow. There's a great diagram and picture here.

I didn't have my camera so just absorbed it myself, and then noticed the real secondary bow, with its colours as they should be, outside the main bow and the reflection bow. As these bows faded I noticed the main bow grow really bright from the ground up. First just a small section of shining spectrum just above the green fields, then it grew upwards like a solid pole of colour, until it was about the height of two hands at arms length. Then it, and the other rainbows, faded away and left me.

Shortly along the track I stopped to help a cyclist whose pedal was falling off. He'd managed to wrap his chain up round his cogs and couldn't work out how to get it back. I unsnagged it from the wheels and we put the chainring back on and did it up as best we could. With my new bike being so problem-free I've stopped carrying tools so I couldn't do a proper job, but probably did enough to get him to Glasson Dock.

For some reason this felt connected to the rainbow display. It was like I'd been treated to this colourful spectacle to put me in the mood to help someone out. I don't need that kind of bribery though, I normally stop to help any cyclist with an obvious problem. But if I hadn't stopped for 20 minutes to watch the show, I probably wouldn't have been there when his chainring had fallen off. Someone knew how to best delay me!

And after fixing the bike, I got another couple of rewards in the form of two more bright rainbows before the sun headed low down and I arrived back in town with a huge smile on my face.