ok so this is some weeks out of date, however this was the 1st time outside my rear garden.
1 hour and 30 minutes of driving away from London Village brought me to sunny(ish) Dengie - close to the seaside - lower right part of the UK - where all light sources seem to originate.
Thanks to a few people (1 in particular) who scoped (no pun intended) the area out and befriended the landowner we found ourselves just before dusk in a remote spot on a farm track with distant LP visible (clacton i think and brentwood the other way)
The Milky way band was visible clearly with the naked eye, as was the ISS passing over and various other sky, bbc and middle eastern satellites. The ISS through bins looked fantastic and was showing a clear " I " shape.
to summarise the night, the ring nebula, double cluster and various other astro wonders were presented with such clarity that id never seen before. The ring nebula showed some colour which on its own was amazing, however you could clearly see without averted vision, with direct vision, both the inner and outer edges of the ring, clearly in the background behind it was the dark expanse of space
it was still quite late to get dark, jupiter and the Pleiades were not out until after 12:30 and viewing wasnt ideal as clouds came in... in a few weeks time once the clocks move, and the winter planets and orion etc are all on display i intend to camp out and detail everything seen....
