If you need to be on the road by two am, as painful as that sounds it’s not as painful as deciding if it’s worth going to bed at all. I plumped for staying up without sleep for a day, but with two days of oversleeping under my belt, so after a time team or two I was packed up and the only one on the road by 2am.
The summer solstice is a special time of year, not just for those with megalithic tendencies, but just because it doesn’t get really dark. Even at two am, the ever present glow of long northern summers can be seen brighter than half a dozen full moons.
After a quick night visit to lleyty’r Filiast, and narrowly missing a police car on the thin mountain road, I was parked up near St Tudnos church and well. I love being up rediculously early, loads of different birdsong, clearish blue skies and not a soul about, excepting road hogging cops. Brilliant.
It’s barely a ten minute walk to the stones, I simply turned right on the path across the grass when I got to a left hand turn in the track, walked straight to it. Plenty of time to .....erm, tidy the place up a bit before the birthday boy comes. We want to look our best don’t we?
At the top of the hill are two large boulders which look like they could’ve once stood up more erect like. The ragged remains of the two rows run downhill for nearly a hundred yards, where the ground dives steeply but navigably down to the coast. I quickly sought every stone in the rows, especially the ones covered in gorse, moss, ferns and grasses, revealing in the process, a stone that looked like a large elongated skull with eye sockets like for a spider. They could have been cup marks but were most probably just the way limestone erodes.
Ooh quick the suns coming, I scamper back up to the top, ready my camera, ready my soul for it’s yearly dose of solstice power and set my face to stunned. The big orange ball slowly lifted it’s self out of the sea, (you don’t see that very often, well, I don’t. ) with all the majesty and magnificence that only an actual star can have, then it was over and that was it, a new day had dawned. In ancient Egypt it would be new year and the Nile has flooded, but, if I was even remotely affected by the solstice power, only the day ahead would tell, I as ever set myself as many targets as my legs will carry me too.
As tear jerkingly beautiful as the sun rise was, it is not part of any alignment with the stone rows, they point too far to the north, it could be aligned on something on land, the stone rectangle above the rows, or the Ormes peak, or something far out to sea, Morcambe bay perhaps, incidentaly the Isle of Man was very visible and distinct to the north. Or perhaps it really was for Deers to walk up and down on.
I love your fieldnotes.
Thanks very much, your very kind.