Fab Find of the Week: SolarWatch app
Today is a turning point in the calendar, with the days starting – YAY! – to lengthen. Even though winter still stretches ahead of us and spring is definitely far away, we always do a little dance on 21st December, feeling illogically cheerful. Conversely, we can get a little melancholy on 21st June, occasionally being heard to mutter: ‘It’s all downhill to Christmas…’
But now, light-wise at least, a few days before Christmas, we’re over the hump and the mornings will start to get brighter. What’s been really, really important to us in the past couple of months is to get out in the daylight. It feels just SO good for mental health, and is definitely effective at fighting SAD, to ensure that we get sunlight – if at all possible – on the pineal gland. (Jo in particular used to suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder quite badly, but many years ago realised that if she got outside every day in whatever daylight there happens to be, it really, really helped.)
SolarWatch, this good-looking app – available from the iTunes store – is proving invaluable, because it tells us exactly what time the sun rises, when it goes to bed, and at what times we can expect ‘golden hour’, those beautiful moments before the sun rises and after it sets which are just so spirit-lifting and, um, photogenic, too. (See the top of this page for a photo that Jo took for her @jofairley Instagram, just after sunset. She actually has the SolarWatch app set to alert her just before sunset, so she can scurry down to the seafront at the end of her road to see it dip below the horizon.)
Walking is definitely our favourite means of exercise – but so much better to do it in daylight. It is scarily easy when indoors to disconnect from whether it’s day or evening out there – but this gives us the nudge we need, lace up our shoes, and go for a spirit-lifting stroll.
Happy Solstice, one and all. And here’s to lighter days and evenings…
SolarWatch app is free (with in-app purchases) – find it on iTunes (link here if you’re connecting from a laptop or desktop)
