Draw Down the Stars: The Journey to Kielder

---

---

In the beginning there was darkness. It was the middle of the night and the moon was new, so what else did I expect? Dark as it was though, I could still see everything in my bedroom, the shape of the wall, the retro fireplace, even my feet, sticking out as they were from the end of the duvet to keep me cool on a particularly stuffy night. My curtains are thick enough to pretty much block out everything from the outside, but having a streetlight directly opposite meant that even the best curtains will let an orangey-glow in around the edges. I took a look at my watch and realised I had only been asleep for an hour, so rather than sit wondering about the marvels of sodium vapour fluorescent lighting, I turned over and went back to sleep. That is how the day began, and that was also, in many ways, the point of our first trip out of the year: we were taking ourselves as far away from the city that we had grown up in as possible, where we could take in the pure darkness of night, a bit of peace and quiet and the stars above. Maybe a few decades ago we could have taken these in much easier, but progress and the modern way of life seem to have taken them away and filed them under the ‘non-essential luxury’ file.

In keeping with the traditional, old-fashioned sense of things, we chose the day of the Royal Wedding to make our escape, mainly because those generous people in charge of our country had given us a day off in celebration, but also partly because it was a particularly good day for darkness, something I will come to later on.

The day began in a pretty disorganised way. The band of interested travellers began at around 8 or nine people, reduced to six as we got closer to the day, then a few essential changes of plans dropped us to four, and finally, the night before, illness dropped us to three before a decision to take a whole host of drugs to fight the illness bought us back to our nice round figure of four. None of this is particularly important, but the resulting quick changing of plans and a lack of communication meant that I could pick up John and Faith as planned but completely catch Lyndsey by surprise. In the time it took us to drink a cup of tea though, Lyndsey was ready, her car packed up and we were on the road.

We were aware that, had Prince William and the soon-to-be Princess Catherine not decided to get married on that day, we would all be slaving away at work, so with that in mind we decided it would only be polite to stop on our journey and watch the wedding. It may have been a mark of the difference between the world of the Royals and our own, but we took in the pomp and ceremony of the biggest wedding in a long time from the comfort of a Burger King at a service station on the M6. It was only 10.30 when we arrived there, and so seemed too early to grab some lunch (although food monster John took the opportunity to devour a burger and fries), but as we sat there with a front row seat and a cup of tea, we became aware that the whole room was filling up behind us; it seems that pretty much everyone that had used the holiday as an excuse to get away for the day had decided that a stop off on the M6 to watch the main event was very much in order. Some of the women looked pretty emotional; a few had tears in their eyes. Most of the men had one eye on their watch and the other on the Duke of Edinburgh, the one man who you could guarantee would turn the whole event into a comedy show with his sharp, witty and often embarrassing comments. As it turned out though, the Duke was on his best behaviour, the wedding went without a hitch and we were back on the road around midday.

Our journey was taking us to Kielder, deep in the Northumberland National Park, a few miles from the Scottish border. The majority of the journey is pretty uninspiring; the country’s longest motorway, the M6, takes you straight up to the Scottish border, and barring a sprinkling of countryside, hills and the briefest view of a lake, it is mainly just road until you reach Carlisle, itself a pretty uninspiring place as far as I could see. Carlisle was where we left the motorway and headed away from the hustle and bustle of England, though, and we took this opportunity to stop for food (John managed another burger and fries) and a few last minute supplies before taking the road to Kielder.

The Northumberland National Park is, as far as I can see, pretty much a huge mass of forests, lakes and hills, cut in half by one road, with a bunch of gravel tracks and minor roads feeding off that. As such, our journey took us into Scotland, briefly, and back down this road until we reached Kielder. Though only in Scotland for a few minutes, we almost ran over a suicidal grouse, only saved by Lyndsey’s quick reactions and its own delayed common sense. I’m not entirely sure what the Scottish people would have made of us taking out one of its national emblems in our short visit, but a few minutes later we passed a huge graveyard, which, I can only assume, must have been for grouse killers and tourists in the area, given that there didn’t seem to be any towns or villages anywhere near for it to be of use to the locals.

One of the main points of the trip was to get a good view of the stars, as I had been told that there were more in the sky than the 10 or fifteen that you can see from Wolverhampton on a good clear night. The signs didn’t bode well, however, as Wolverhampton was as grey and cloudy as it had been for weeks, when we had been enjoying an unusual April heat-wave. Luckily though, by the time we reached Kielder, the sun was out, and while there were plenty of clouds dotted about, there seemed a good chance of at least seeing something. We had booked a caravan in Kielder’s campsite for the weekend, something which I was slightly unsure of because the price didn’t seem too bad, and in England this often means that what you get would be pretty substandard, but even if it was, it would give us a few more luxuries than camping. Being in the middle of nowhere, there wasn’t much other choice, and we soon realised that we hadn’t made a bad one. The campsite owners look slightly like Julie Walters and Bill Oddie, Julie seeming to be away with the fairies some of the time but apparently a nice person with it. She mentioned that she had been watching the Royal Wedding while cleaning the caravan, and it appeared that she must have been so intrigued by the ceremony that she had forgotten to actually clean the place. Not put off, Lyndsey had the bleach and vacuum out in seconds, and the place was a comfortable base for the weekend within ten minutes.

As soon as we had started to drive into the forest, we all lost our phone signal. None of us thought that this was a particularly bad thing, but those little luxuries that we had become accustomed to, such as phoning home and using Google to find our way around when we became lost were, for a few days at least, a thing of the past. After settling into the caravan, we took a trip down into the village, where we could find out what was happening and where everything was, as I had failed to print off any maps before we left (relying entirely on our modern smart phones, which are pretty much rendered useless once the mobile signal is lost). With a map found, we took a quick trip to the area where the observatory is, which is down a little gravel track just off the main road, had a quick walk amongst the trees, then headed back to the caravan where we could get a nice cup of tea and a change of clothes ready for an evening of star gazing at Kielder Observatory.

---