It had been a cloudy day with the odd shower burst thrown in, one of which I managed to get caught in during a dog walk with Brad and Holly this afternoon. While we were out, the skies began to clear revealing huge chunks of blue and being the weather geek that I am, I checked the forecast for around sunset which showed clear skies for the last hour before the sun went down.

It was a big ask, and it would've been a bit risky if I didn't live so close to Winter Hill, but I remembered skipping a walk under a similar forecast a couple of weeks back and come sunset the sky was alive with colour. I wasn't about to miss it again, so I drove the nine miles to the edge of the moorland above Horwich, where the skies were… well, not quite as clear as forecast, but they certainly showed promise.

Because I was pushed for time, instead of parking at Wilderswood car park I pulled up on Georges Lane, which gives easy access to Rotary Way. It can be a fair slog up the lane the kind of slope where I've seen mountain bikers demount and push their bikes until the gradient eases.

About half a mile in, the moorland opens up, and just then a burst of light squeezed through a wide gap beneath the cloud briefly illuminating the heather for the few seconds it lasted.

As difficult as it was, I pulled myself away from the afterglow and continued my descent down Rotary Way. As the lights of the cottages below began to flicker on, I was passed by a young lad on an electric bike who slowed to a stop as he came alongside me. "I'll warn my mate he's just behind me to slow down too," he said, which I thought was a jolly decent thing to do. While he waited, he asked where I'd been, and I told him I'd just nipped up to Two Lads. "It's cold, innit," he replied. "Aye, it's going to be a nice day tomorrow," I said.

His mate appeared moments later, slowing down as the electric motor whined itself to a crawl and then fell silent. The first lad asked if he fancied another ride up to the Winter Hill summit; his mate's helmet nodded, and off they went two red tail lights, the electric whine, and then nothing.

It felt like ages since I'd had such a nice sunset, the kind that can flip a grey day on its head. I carried on down towards the cottages as the last of the light drained from the sky. The afterglow faded as I neared the lane, the lights flickering on one by one. It struck me how close I'd come to missing the sunset and how simple gamble nine miles up the road ended in colour.