There's at least two sides to Bolton - there's Peter Kay and Fred's side - mills, back to backs and grotty nightclubs, and then there's the Bolton of Stu Francis and Badly Drawn Boy, bluebells and the open moors. But have a look at this page - http://www.iol.ie/~geniet/eng/majorstandstills.htm - and test the links that you see to the sites investigating the next lunar 'standstill'. The Bolton one certainly works.

In the Smithills Country Park there are four stone rows, two are crooked like a broken stick, so there are six possible alignments. (There's far more certainty with a straight line than with a circle). The moon has four extreme positions - the most northerly rising position, the most southerly rising position, the most northerly setting position and the most southern setting position. I've found the best way to understand this movement is as the tides. There is an eighteen and a half year cycle.

The Bolton stone rows are lined up on these four points in the sky - that isn't so much unusual as downright unique. The two alignments left over are to Spica rising, at about 2000 BCE, and to Deneb setting, at about the same date. No, the scenery isn't as spectacular as on the Isle of Lewis - the monuments are much less romantic - even pragmatic. But they are there.

When the quarter moon rises at the standstill in 2006 it will be from behind the ridge in this picture - http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/post/21430 (there's none of that skipping around the horizon stuff here). The moonset, to this particular standstill, is very beautiful though. It'll be reflected in Liverpool Bay and will disappear behind - well I'm not sure (ask me after 2006) - possibly the stack at Holyhead. I need a ten mile to the inch map to work it out.

And the moral of this story is 'the most beautiful spot is where you are now'.