A 7km night walk in The Yorkshire Dales to try to find the Northern Lights and truly appreciate our ‘Northern Delights’

Last Sunday afternoon (25 April 2021) an amber Aurora alert pinged up on my phone.

For the uninitiated an amber alert is very good news.

It means that the famous Aurora Borealis, better known to many of us as the Northern Lights, could be visible to the eye in Scotland and the north of England.

As I now live in a very dark part of northern England, this alert could mean very good news. The aurora could be showing up right on my doorstep!

There were a few disadvantages to also consider as I pondered on the merits of whether or not I should head out later on that evening.

Late April is not the best time of year for a northern light show so there were no guarantees that I would find them and after 3 gruelling weeks of moving 2 generations of our family into our new North Yorkshire home, I was pretty shattered, making the thought of a disturbed night’s sleep quite unappealing.

The alert indicated a possible light show in the very early hours of Monday morning, meaning that at the start of week 4 after our intensely physical house move I was going to be completely shattered due to a self-induced disrupted and limited night’s sleep.

I pondered ‘should I stay or should I go?’ all evening and finally decided I would only get up if I was awake.

The truth, as you may have guessed, is that I didn’t really need to set an alarm.

I wanted to see the lights and the thought of missing them meant I was inevitably wide awake at one o’clock in the morning.

A short explanation for my obsession may be helpful at this point.

I have become hooked on seeing the Northern Lights again.

Just over a year ago, in late February 2020 and before Covid 19 ruled our world, I was fortunate enough to witness them for real with my 2 sons in Tromso, northern Norway.

Looking back it now seems like a lifetime ago, not just 14 months.

Lockdowns One Two and Three have invaded our world since then and all of us have had so many of our hopes and dreams shelved ever since.

The photographs above and below were taken on our penultimate evening in Tromso; one of the most perfect night’s of my life.

My youngest son had spent the previous 8 months in Bergen, southern Norway as part of his Geology degree course. With him resident in Norway it had been a natural excuse for his brother and I to fly out during February half term 2020 and for the three of us to then fly up to Tromso, deep in the Artic Circle, for 4 of those days.

The lights had eluded us during the first 2 days and we had even contemplated splashing out over £200 per head to join a ‘Chase the Lights’ expedition as guests of a private tour company.

Having travelled for this specific purpose our biggest unspoken fear was that we would miss the lights; the blizzards of February 2020 in that area of the artic circle never seemed to stop. A clear evening sky, which is an essential for viewing the aurora, had seemed particularly alien in the frozen wilderness that surrounded Tromso during our 4 day visit.

Having resisted that costly private tour opportunity, we had decided instead to ‘chase the lights’ ourselves and to catch a bus out of Tromso to the village furthest away from the city and to walk out into the darkness to try and try to find them.

It was a freezing cold night with ‘feels like temperatures’ of -16 to -20 and we wore multiple layers. Despite this, if we stood still for just a minute we were frozen to our core.

After walking along the sheet ice pavement that borders the road out of the village we used Google Maps on my phone to find a ‘marked’ footpath to get us away from street lights. The path was totally covered in thigh-deep snowdrifts. It was exhausting trying to wade through the snow.

10 minutes and barely 200 metres later, having already expended significant levels of energy we stumbled on an empty wooden yurt that was unlocked. We later found out that this yurt was the Norwegian version of a village hall in the UK and available for public use throughout the year.

Inside the yurt we found a fire pit complete with wood and matches and we did the obvious thing…………… lit a fire and attempted to warm up.

Just 20 minutes later when we ventured outside for a peep at the evening sky, we witnessed one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen as the Northern Lights in their full emerald majesty turned up.

It was a wonderful, bewitching and intoxicating sight.

I’m just disappointed to admit that it was so bitterly cold, none of us could do the lights full justice with our photographs and most of our shots just weren’t as sharp as would have liked. With our hands frozen and completely numb getting any reasonable pictures was actually quite impressive.

Nevertheless the memory is as vivid as ever and I’m not ashamed to say I’m now an aurora addict.

The Tromso trip proved the most magical experience and for the last 14 months I have regularly checked the alerts from the ‘Aurora Watch’ App that I installed on my phone when we returned to the UK at the end of that trip.

I’ve chased them a few times since then in the UK but without success.

So rather inevitably I didn’t sleep on Sunday night as an aurora anticipation gripped me once again!

At 01.10 on the Monday morning, after whispering a “goodbye and see you in half an hour” message to my wife I ventured out of the house complete with camera, head torch and gloves and turned right outside the gate of our new home in the Yorkshire Dales and strolled up the lane.

We are very fortunate to now live in a designated ‘Dark Sky reserve’, meaning that sightings of the Northern Lights in this part of North Yorkshire are sometimes possible.

The addictive excitement that I felt 14 months previously in the icy chill of the artic returned.

All too quickly though I became distracted by the nocturnal sounds and sights of a late April night in ‘God’s own country’.

The crystal clear night sky meant that there was plenty to distract me.

Silhouettes of skeletal trees graced the fields and the synthesiser-type call of lapwings near and far, frequently pierced the night.

I realised that despite my solitude I was far from alone and the real beauty of this walk was emphasised as my sense of hearing became equally as important as that of seeing.

Some way in the distance an owl repeatedly hooted: almost stuck on repeat.

Once my eyes had adjusted to the deep darkness I stopped to take photographs. I took hundreds as I struggled to perfect the settings on my camera, trying to find the ultimate blend of ISO, aperture and timings.

I lamented my limited skills with my Canon at night as my fingers started to freeze, but also welcomed the chance to refine and develop my novice-like night shooting skills literally whilst out ‘in the field’.

The tree and moon photos easily took over half an hour for me to develop anything remotely good enough for publication and in my desire to perfect the shot I had completely forgotten the real reason for my night walk.

I made myself leave the tree and carry on up the lane to a point adjacent to a local hill.

High up in moonlit sky a plane streaked across the light of the full moon. I was actually quite surprised to see it, given how early in the morning it was and how the airline industry had been in its own severe lockdown for over a year.

The plume left by the plane reminded me that whilst I felt alone in this moment, there was still a connected world around me and both Leeds/Bradford and Manchester airports weren’t too far away. Normal life continues, albeit in a currently abnormal way.

I passed the inevitable pile of deliberately discarded bottles and cans on the grassy verge left by yet another litter tourist. A recurring theme of my blogs has been to question the thinking of so many people who like to empty their trash onto the verges of the beauty spots of Britain. Litter tourists continue to blight our natural world.

Why? It shames us all.

My eyes and focus drifted back to the north and after a check on my app I waited and searched that horizon in vain.

An orange hue was visible in the distance, but it never became anything more alluringly aurora like.

I tinkered on my camera and then decided that I might as well night-hike across to the trig point.

Again the lights eluded me, but I easily filled an hour as I played once more with my camera and attempted to secure some silhouetted shots of me next to the trig point with a moonlit background.

A cursory glance at my watch told me that my ‘pop out for half an hour’ comment had been made nearly 3 hours ago.

I checked my phone which had been out of signal range and read an alarmed text message from my wife indicating that very point! It meant it was time for me to make a swift return home and avoid retribution.

Time definitely flies when you are enjoying yourself: even at 4am!.

I had missed the lights and I was probably going to be in the proverbial dog house!

As I made my way back down the hill I realised that missing the lights wasn’t that disappointing.

I would have loved to witness the aurora of course, but despite my near miss I had really enjoyed the privilege of witnessing so many new sights and sounds. In the normal pace of life these are the things that so often pass us by within the conformity and structures of our days.

I was also reminded that whilst the northern lights had thwarted me on this occasion, I had been privileged to witness lots of Northern Delights over the last 3 weeks.

Spring had definitely sprung during our 21 days of Dales life and we had been privileged enough to witness so many ‘awe and wonder’ moments. So many to report:

Frank and Freda our resident pheasants parading past our front door each day, red kites circling daily high in the crystal blue skies above our home, hares as big as a dog bounding through the garden, birds eggs in so many trees and ripe and ready to reveal their golden treasure, moorhen chicks and ducklings swimming on our own garden pond.

Everywhere golden daffodils, continued to defy the natural and stand tall even in late April. The cooler spring of 2021 has enabled them to linger way beyond their normal life span.

I reminded myself that just 2 weeks ago in our first week of life in the Dales we had been treated to our own ‘Narnia-fest’ as 4 inches of snow fell overnight and we awoke to a Sunday morning in mid- April full of a deep and crisp and even snowfall.

We even got to meet our own field mouse on Monday morning.

Nature’s bounty had revealed itself on all points of our homestead compass and I realised that I now had a second blossoming addiction: true wildlife appreciation! Watch out David Attenborough, I just got really interested in your world.

I remembered also that in just a few days time the 7 Brahma eggs fertilised by Laurence the strutting rooster, who had lived next door in our 6 week stay in Holmfirth, would start to hatch.

I had nicknamed him Laurence due to to his striking resemblance to Laurence Llewellyn Bowen, of interior design fame.

If our hatched chickens bear even a slight resemblance to Laurence in all his posturing glory, we will be privileged enough to have our very own ‘Magnificent 7’.

Once again the great outdoors had rejuvenated my spirit of optimism and whilst a re-visit to Norway to find those pesky lights would be fantastic, I’m privileged enough to have a wealth of northern delights on my own doorstep.

The challenge for you and me is a simple one: just go outside and find them!

This was my shortest walk since I started blogging. I only covered 6.5km in just over 3 hours! Sometimes the slow way is the best way.

I remembered the George Michael lyric: “Lets go outside, in the sunshine” and realised that he didn’t quite nail it. Night walking is just as good fun as that in the sunlight and all the more invigorating because whilst the world sleeps you feel so alive.

Thanks agin for the read. If you like this blog you can subscribe to receiving this and my future ramblings via email by subscribing to my WordPress site free of charge of course.

In the meantime I hope you enjoy the upcoming unravellings of spring and that you and your family stay optimistic and well as the hint of our Covid restrictions ending starts to become more real.

Roll on May 17th and ultimately June 21st.

Nelson Mandela chose a good title for his book: It’s a long Walk to freedom.

Ultimately we can all hope to get to a new and better freedom soon; step by step!

Martin x

STOP PRESS: 2 of our chicks hatched this afternoon. Eggciting!