I took this photo on Christmas Day. I was out on my bike, but suffering from a little bit of stomach upset. As a consequence I was cycling slowly and not enjoying the ride, but because of the stomach ache I stopped to have a look behind.

I was rewarded with this view of a rainbow arching over the tree. It was the highlight of the ride and an auspicious sign for Christmas Day. Sri Chinmoy has said rainbows are a sign of inner progress, so I always take it as a sign of encouragement.

On the last day in Kalamata, Greece, there was this wonderful rainbow over the hotel. The light in Greece has a magic touch, especially around sunset. It certainly lifts the spirits after the relatively dark days of northern England. The rainbow colours were vivid and bright – more intense than the Yorkshire winter – though both rainbows had their own beauty.

You could clearly see all seven colours in the Kalamata rainbow.

This is another favourite rainbow photo. I was visiting Bradford, the town where I used to go to school. Although Bradford was the first town of the industrial revolution, it has fallen on hard times in recent years, and the city centre can be a little depressing. However, on exiting the train station, there was this towering rainbow, which could have illuminated even the slums of the Victorian Age.

Bradford.

This is quite a short rainbow in Menston. In the distance is Leeds-Bradford airport. The rainbow is catching a caravan park.

Sometimes you have to look hard to see a rainbow. There is the faintest rainbow in this photo; you can barely tell by looking at the photograph, though it was there. If rainbows are a sign of inner progress, then I was making the smallest, tiniest progress on this day. But, I suppose anything is better than going backwards!

Isaac Newton, back in the Seventeenth Century, split white light with a prism to show that light was composed of seven differently coloured waves. It is fascinating that within white light, there are so many different realities, we only rarely see. From the other perspective, it is also fascinating how the divergent seven colours can combine to create the purest, white light.