Celebrating the Summer Solstice.                                                  

Without being too picky or exact, I have always chosen to celebrate the Summer Solstice on June 21^st and the winter one bang on December 21^st I know that the fully correct moment is when the sun stops traveling north, the longest day, and the complete opposite in winter. I do like to make a big enough thing about those two, although I also like to mark the spring and autumn days too, I am pretty much with the druids about mid winter, spring, summer and autumn. My husband is happy to go along with this just to help make me happy, as he did today having set the alarm for 3.52 am. We left home at 4.10 am and got to the road called High Titten that leads up onto the South Downs in Amberley, where we would park up. All carefully planned.  So at 4.30 am we then had ten minutes to get to the best position by 4.40 am. The first section is a steep hill that we have for the last 25 years called ‘Christopher Reeves Hill. The reason we have called it that was a simple motivational story. We were in the early days of leading and coaching Tuff Fitty Triathlon Club and we included that hill right at the beginning of the hardest of our club run sessions. The thought we offered our runners was, that instead of moaning about how hard a hill it was to get up, that they should say to themselves; ‘How lucky I am, to be strong and fit enough to get up this hill and to think about how much Christopher Reeves would love to be able to do that hard run, instead of being stuck in a wheelchair paralyzed from the neck down after the horse riding accident that had ended his movie career in about 1995.

This morning at our ages of 70 for Steve and 80 for me, we hiked up to the top of our Christopher Reeves Hill. Still thankful to have the fitness to do it. Steve had worked the timing out perfectly and the lowest part of the sky was already every shade of flame, orange and purple. When we left from home we had talked about the weather forecast and said that there was a chance that the rain would have reached the area by the time the sunrise was due. We carried on regardless, hoping that we might just catch the moment. 

We were more than rewarded for making the sacrifice of an ultra early start time by catching the best sunrise of the year. There needs to be cloud for the best colour show doesn’t there?

There was also a weird rainbow behind us and another prism of colour to the South. We stood and gawked, wondered and pretty much worshiped the display as it changed colour and intensity by the second. I once read a line out of Albert Camus’s diaries, where he said “Nature abhors miracles that last too long”. I think of that so often because it could not be more true; how many times have you struggled to get the camera out to catch an image and when you have it all set up the wonderful light had gone or the bird had flown or the butterfly vanished?

There was heavy cloud today and rain correctly forecast. We were out for an 8 mile run after the sunrise. Steve forgot to ‘pause’ the Garmin and so our finish time today includes all the photographic and wonderment moments and makes it read as the slowest 8 mile run of the season. Mind you it was a hard run on a dangerously uneven rough flint and chalk surface. Flint is so hard on the joints and muscles and chalk, once the rain starts is lethally slippery. The run was all hilly and quite varied since the top and lea side of the downs is mainly farmland. We ran through huge fields of Wheat and also Linseed that was just starting to come into flower, and once more wondered how the crops could grow in such rock hard ground. 

As we changed direction on our run at about three miles, which equalled the point of no return today, we saw that it was without doubt raining over the sea and was well on it way to catch us at our most distant point. When the rain first started it wasn’t too bad and at least I had worn a light shower proof jacket.  However, shower proof does not seem to mean deluge proof and by the time we turned again with three miles to go to get back the van it was sheeting rain and the wind was doing a good imitation of an autumn gale. Once back up on the South Downs Way, that is a high point, as indicated by one of the old trig points, it was blowing really hard and we were both soaked to the skin and I could hardly see for rainwater dripping into my eyes as well as running off my nose and squelching in my trainers. 

The number one place to go for the summer solstice would have to be Stonehenge as the Druid celebration shows when thousands of people turn up just for the craic. Stonehenge is my favourite ancient monument in the entire UK. There are lots of other places I love well but for me the stones are truly spiritual. The Stone Age, Newgrange in Co. Meath, Ireland, is marvellous too, that is a winter Solstice gathering place and equally mystical. Of course in England and the rest of the UK we are littered with marvellous places to visit or just gaze at as you pass, as Steve and I have done literally hundreds of times, and Steve has never once told me to ‘stop it’ when, as I always do without fail, say boldly ‘All Hail the Stones’, as they come into sight! Mad. I know. Castles, Cathedrals, The Angel of the North, hill carvings…. Love them all. I don’t think that I have any friends who would be at all surprised at this revelation. 

Newgrange , Co Meath, Ireland a stone age burial vault