[speckled wood]

Something I really notice is that on an overcast night you can actually see better on a clear night, simply down to the street lights reflected back down from the clouds. Doing much of my wanderings after dark the terrible and pointless waste of energy is obvious to me.

An experiment worth trying if you have a digital camera with a long exposure setting (ie 15 seconds or more) is to set it on some firm support at the longest exposure setting and a wide apature and take a few shots. if you are even withing five miles of a town or village with streetlights you will probably still have enough light to take a picture that looks almost as if it was taken in daylight.