Dark Skies
In the week when a Welsh island became Europe’s first International Dark Sky Sanctuary, it’s time for a nightwalk to explore Rutland’s increasingly rare dark skies.
One of the reasons for leaving town to move to the Rutland countryside, reluctant family in tow, was the dark skies.
In 2014, while our Stamford townhouse was extended and renovated, we decamped to a thatched cottage in Hambleton, a village on a humpback peninsula in Rutland Water.
Holly Cottage, our two-bedroom home from February to August that year, wasn’t ideal for a family of six, but it was cheaper than being in town and we treated the experience as an adventure. Our four children were to share a long dormitory room in the roof and have the run of a rabbit-grazed garden that merged into meadow, overlooking the water below.
That first February night, up in the eaves, settling small people under duvets – the youngest, eyes closed, thumb in mouth, his eldest brother howling with homesickness – we became aware of an altogether different soundscape. No drone of distant traffic on the A1, or cars speeding along suburban roads, just silence.
Then, owls. Many owls.
The tall trees around our cottage, opposite the grounds of Hambleton Hall, came alive with a choir of tawny owls. Males hu-hu-hu-hooing and shrieky females keewick-ing.
After lights out, I wandered outside into the clear winter air and looked up. That night, like all cloudless nights at Holly Cottage, the stars were cast across silver-speckled infinity. Two straining eyes, a contorted neck and a small mind couldn’t comprehend the endless enormity.
Satellites passed overhead in regular orbits.
I hadn’t seen skies like this since my student summers in Brittany, France, when we slept outside under unpolluted skies watching the Perseid meteor shower every August. It was like a firework display in reverse, shooting stars firing down towards earth every minute: purple, red, green and yellow. We oohed and aahed, laughed, talked, held hands and drifted into restless sleep.
Recalling those French starry nights, I began nightwalking around Hambleton and the peninsula.
Under a bright moon, there was no need for a head torch. The luminous glow of stony tracks lined the way, eyes adapting to woodland darkness. Through the branches, starlight glittered the water.
One entirely black, moonless night, I set off for a saunter. There was no street lighting near Holly Cottage, just a curtain of trees. I stopped to extend my hand in front of my face. Nothing appeared. Zero visibility. I couldn’t recall experiencing such complete darkness.
Four years after moving back into our refurbished townhouse, a suburban dream of open plan living and underfloor heating, we sold up and moved back to Rutland for an old stone farmhouse with low ceilings, a cold brick kitchen floor and ancient single glazing that radiated the chill inwards.
I had missed the country, fields, wildlife – and dark skies.
A midlife crisis. Naturally.
Not everyone in the family felt the same way as I did. But then, in spring 2020, the world changed and we all began to see things differently.
I have been nightwalking regularly since we moved here.
I night-hike into the Welland Valley, to Turtle Bridge, and wander the lanes frequently, on a whim. Sometimes I walk with my boys; magical time that moves them to talk about their teenage lives.
When the first snows came, the whole family embarked on a midnight adventure, trailing three miles around High Rutland in ethereal, powder-white light.
My appreciation of the rarity and importance of dark skies has grown.
Curious to know more, I read Dark Skies, A Journey into the Wild Night by Tiffany Francis-Baker.
It reveals how excessive night lighting negatively affects the habitats and behaviours of wildlife. Animals that hunt in the dark are fooled into waiting for the light to dim, as they would with the moon cycle. Birds that migrate and navigate by the moon and stars can become disorientated, while urban lighting can trigger earlier dawn choruses. Francis-Baker explains:
“As the dawn chorus usually takes place just before it is light enough for the birds to navigate and forage for food, by singing earlier this means they are increasing their efforts without the opportunity to replenish their energy stores immediately afterwards. It also makes them susceptible to nocturnal predators whose active hours are more likely to overlap with those of the birds.”
People are affected, too. In urban areas, artificial lighting is three to six times more intense, meaning people are more likely to sleep less, wake up confused in the night and feel unnaturally tired in the daytime.
So much of the light pollution is wasted energy, too – costly in carbon and monetary terms. Francis-Baker concludes:
“More than anything, protecting our skies from light pollution is vital for reminding us of our place in the universe.”
The South Downs, where the author lives, where I roamed in my youth, and where I once hiked across the Seven Sisters cliffs at midnight under a full and frosty December moon, is now an International Dark Sky Reserve.
My artist sister still lives nearby and paints woodland night scenes. One of her pictures hangs in my bedroom: the moon shines in a corner day and night.
The South Downs is one of a growing number of reserves that are part of the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), founded in 1988 by two astronomers.
Just this week, as Venus, Jupiter and the Moon aligned in the night sky, the Welsh island of Ynys Enlli, also know as Bardsey Island, off the Llŷn Peninsula, became the first site in Europe to be made an International Dark Sky Sanctuary.
The certification came with a warning. A new study revealed that light pollution is ‘sky rocketing’, with the night sky brightening 10% every year for the past 12 years. It means that a place where 250 stars were once visible would see less than 100 stars 18 years later.
The stars appeared to align in more than one way this week.
On Tuesday night, I joined a small class of aspiring writers on a Zoom call with US astronomer Mike Brown, whose memoir How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming I had just read. Mike’s boundless enthusiasm for his work, scouring the sky in search of new planets, is infectious.
Yet he describes his book as a love letter to his daughter. Indeed it is. But it could also be a love letter to the night sky, such is his devotion.
It’s dark in Rutland when we speak, but morning at the California Institute of Technology, Caltech, from where Mike is speaking. When he’s asked what the rest of his day looks like, he casually mentions he will be working on the latest images from the James Webb Space Telescope. So I am intrigued to see the news headlines two days later that six massive, ancient galaxies had been discovered. ‘Universe breakers’ the reports say, with the potential to upend existing theories of cosmology.
It’s too much to fathom. But it’s all out there and, for us, under the same sky.
Friday night and after two days in bed with illness, I take a light-headed evening stroll around the village. I stop to take a picture by a farm gate of the waxing crescent moon, the silver sliver phase. The night air is still and cold.
I’m conscious of light from one of the few street lights, the illuminated signs of the Rutland Point service station projecting a glow like Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, and the artificial halo of Corby’s factories hovering over the horizon.
Despite some light pollution, there are dark skies to be appreciated here, especially in the Welland Valley and over High Rutland. But there is also creeping urbanisation of the countryside.
I think of Holly Cottage, our home for seven months. A year or two after we moved out, it was sold, then demolished and redeveloped. What’s there now is Hambleton Grange, a five-bedroom super-home behind electric gates with subterranean car stacker, gym and cinema. It’s for sale: £3 million.
Like a number of redeveloped homes in Hambleton, Rutland’s millionaire’s row, it comes with generous external lighting, to see and – perhaps – be seen. Because darkness is a terrible inconvenience.
What an interesting read. Dark skies are such a loss and seem to be having an awful impact on wildlife. Have you come across Tristan Gooley's books about natural navigation? I've only read Wild Signs and Star Paths so far, but found it fascinating.
Brilliantly written Gary and very thought provoking. It is going to make me think and look differently when I next stare up at a night sky.