Draw Down the Stars: Out into the Country

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It is often said that a picture tells a thousand words, but a picture of the stars from the top of a hill in Kielder tells you absolutely nothing. Unless complete blackness tells you something. The light from some of those stars has travelled for billions of years to reach us, but only a select few would see it, and only a special kind of camera would be able to preserve it. As good as our digital cameras are, we didn’t have that special kind of camera, so the night became one of those rare nights when you really did have to be there. Once back in the car, it seemed a shame to turn the lights on after spending so long avoiding light to make the most of the view, but not turning the lights on was the best way to end up in a ditch, so back to reality it was for our short trip back to the caravan.

Kielder campsite does its best to promote a family friendly environment, and so there is a strict ‘no noise, no drunken idiots’ policy from 10.30 onwards, a policy they strictly enforce by locking the gates and keeping the riff-raff out. The policy backfired slightly, as we probably made more noise trying to fit the car onto a grass verge without hitting other stargazers or landing in the ditch than if we had just driven onto the site and quietly pulled next to the caravan, but pulling up at the entrance meant we could take another look at the stars as we walked through to the caravan. Perhaps the only disappointment of the night was that the caravan stood next to a laundry block whose bright security light meant that watching the stars from the comfort of our smaller-than-average beds was slightly out of the question.

Despite the hour, we were not tired, but we were cold, so the only truly effective course of action in such circumstances is to make a nice warm cup of hot chocolate. After hot chocolate, we decided that the dinner we had skipped earlier shouldn’t really go to waste, so the early hours of Saturday morning were spent making enchiladas and drinking beer, almost certainly something that would have seen us thrown off the campsite if we had been caught, but there was no sign of Bill Oddie or Julie Walters, and we eventually called it a night around 3.30.

Less than three hours later, the sun was shining and I was wide awake. Then I realised that it was far too early to be awake and went back to sleep. Half an hour later I was awake again. What was wrong with me? In the same way the darkness had called me the night before, the light now wanted a piece of the action. I carried on sleeping and waking until I couldn’t take it anymore and thought that it was a reasonable hour to get up, and then pottered about getting ready with possibly just about enough noise to wake everyone else up. Though we were all up and about by around 9.30, the morning was a pretty lazy one, and by the time breakfast was cooked and several cups of tea downed, it was getting on for midday.

We had two ambitions for the rest of the weekend; to find out what the rest of Kielder had to offer and to find a bit of Hadrian’s Wall, as it is virtually illegal to visit Northumberland without doing this. Being an ambitious lot, we decided to have a go at doing both, although not leaving the caravan until dinnertime severely limited our chances of actually doing this. Kielder is small, there is no doubt about that. The campsite handily backs onto the pub and the few houses that there are in the village, and just beyond that is the castle and the youth hostel and, well, that’s it. We headed for the castle and wandered around the museum in there for a while. As castles go, it’s cosy, more like a place to stay in the countryside for some pretty rich people than a place royalty might hide away in whilst their armies stand outside fighting off swarms of midges or other such nasties that might want to take over the area. As it happens, that is exactly what the castle is: a country getaway where the Duke of Northumberland could park himself while going out hunting. The village was built around it and the castle is still the focal point now. An hour or so around the castle is plenty though, and so we thought we’d hit the road and see if we could get to the wall. By this time, the sun was shining, there was not a cloud in the sky, and the whole of the national park is pretty breathtaking. We stopped off a few times around Kielder Water, a huge lake that is actually the largest artificial reservoir in England, past some villages with interesting names (Mouseyhaugh and Donkleywood), and eventually stopped off for a break in Bellingham, home, we came to discover, of the Baafest Folk Festival. Here we found out some more about where Hadrian’s Wall was, decided it was too far to carry on and see today, and popped into the Rose and Crown for a pint instead. Given the weather, drinking outside was the order of the day, as was following it up with an ice-cream, before deciding to head back in the general direction of Kielder, where we had some organic, free-range chicken sitting in the fridge begging us to throw it into a curry. By the time the curry and another swift drink were down, it was time to head to the castle for the evening’s entertainment.

Not long after we first arrived, I said something along the lines of “I hope we see bats this weekend. Bats are cool”. As fate would have it, within half an hour Faith had found a leaflet advertising Bat Night in the castle, so we felt like we had to go along. Bat Night turned out to be a quick wander around the castle, down to the River Tyne (I should point out that the River Tyne starts just outside of Kielder, and so it is more of a stream than the great foggy body that Paul Gascoigne sang so fondly of) and back again, but there were indeed a few bats flitting about which would have given the castle a slightly spooky look had we not all been busy trying to catch photos of bats (they’re quicker than you think, have radar (or echolocation to be precise) and aren’t actually blind so despite our efforts we didn’t end up with any bat pictures). After an hour or so, the tour guide seemed thoroughly disinterested, so we disbanded and went to the pub instead.

The Anglers Arms is a wonderfully local pub, cosy, friendly and in the middle of the pub quiz when we arrived. This was actually our second arrival as we had taken in a very swift one on the way to Bat Night, but this time we got a chance to see the locals drink too much and got into conversation with someone who lived on an oil rig who had also had a few too many. Apparently he’d known somebody from Wolverhampton once, a 7-foot giant. Oddly enough, I also spoke to the owner in the toilet later, who had also known someone from Wolverhampton once, who was also a 7-foot giant. Is there something in Geordie folklore that mentions the giants from Wolverhampton and were they surprised that we were so small?

After a couple of drinks we decided to leave the locals to it and have one more walk out of the main part of the village to see the stars again. The whole day had been beautiful and sunny with not a cloud in the sky, and tonight was even more incredible than in the observatory in many ways. We struggled to make out the plough and Saturn, possibly because the experts weren’t there to point them out, but more likely because there were just so many visible tonight. It really wasn’t a case of looking at the stars, but looking at the galaxies, as there were definite clusters making shapes in the sky. At one point, one burned and fizzled and flew across the sky, and before I had registered what it was, Lyndsey, John and Faith were getting pretty excited because they, too, had just seen a shooting star. Turns out they must be pretty common after all.

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