Winter solstice in Britain: lattitudes apart
To experience the winter solstice in Britain, the Calder brothers went to extremes. They stayed from dawn till dusk at opposite ends of the mainland
By Simon and Jo Calder
Published: 24 December 2005 by Independent.co.uk
Winter solstice in Britain:
lattitudes apart 49.7 degrees north
Travel, like love, photography and life, is an accumulation of moments: instants of such intensity that they stand out against the haze of the humdrum. And as day breaks on 21 December, 2005, I seem to be experiencing a whole series of them. At 7am, in mainland Britain's southernmost community, Lizard Village, I had followed the fingerpost signalling the way to "Most Southerly P't" (a signwriter economising on paint?). As the kingdom disintegrated down towards the Channel, I was chased by wraiths dancing through the fields - or that was how it looked each time the beam emitted by Lizard Point lighthouse swept across the land. As you near the far-from-bitter end of Britain, the terrain diminishes at the same rate as the rowdiness from the sea rises. At 7.29am, the first gull greeted the dawn.
Dawn? But the sun is not scheduled to make an appearance for another 48 minutes. No one told God, or whoever else might be responsible for this theatre of nature. High up to the west, an overweight half-moon in the shape of a plumped-up cushion is beaming down through a veil of high, thin cloud. But it is a mere lunar sideshow compared with the action in the east.
The good thing about being at the far end of a peninsula (The Lizard) that is itself joined to a larger peninsula (Cornwall) is that no land intrudes upon the stage where the horizon is putting on a dazzling overture for the day. The sea in the foreground is a ripple of molten steel, anointed by an occasional sparkle of gold. The weld between sea and sky is becoming more sharply focused now. Resting upon it is a narrow band of cloud, occasionally punctured by the lights of a vessel; this is a maritime superhighway. Above the cloud, flames with the ruddy complexion of someone with a serious scrumpy habit scare away the gloom.
Here on the shore, I am still in a land of shadows. A team of muscular rocks and a timid huddle of huts are defined only by more intense darkness. That band of cloud on the horizon hides the appointed moment for sunrise. But at 8.24am, the recalcitrant sun finally puts in an appearance and everything changes: the land has won back its colour.
My brother Jo has always got up later than me, which is one reason I thought he might prefer far-north Scotland to far-south England. It will be past nine before he can hope to see the sun. So while he slumbers, I shall walk the South West Coast Path. Not all of it, you understand: it is, at 631 miles, the longest National Trail in Britain. The couple of miles from Lizard Point to Church Cove will do, to see the paraphernalia of the seas. The dominant feature is the lighthouse that long ago put paid to the local industry of stripping wrecks. Beneath it, stands England's most southerly - and most perfectly located - hostel. Polbrean Youth Hostel is one of very few awarded five stars for its facilities, and earns at least as many for its views of the sea and shore.
By now the tenacious grass that clings to the Lizard has acquired a coat of ochre courtesy of the rising sun. You would not want to tackle the coast path in low light: much of this stretch is accompanied by a precipitous drop. But this midwinter day is proving so dazzling that sunglasses would help.
Below the path and just out to sea, Bumble Rock resembles both a lean, black cat sitting upright, and a finger beckoning the unwary landlubber or mariner. I managed to avoid both temptation and carelessness, and stepped around the edge of England to the curious community of Housel Bay. Around the start of the 20th century, this was one of the busier parts of Cornwall. The hotel - still thriving - had recently opened, catering to well-heeled tourists and a young engineer named Guglielmo Marconi. From a couple of huts just along the shore, he was soon to demonstrate the power of radio by broadcasting to the Isle of Wight. Today, his premises comprise a National Trust property. His invention radiates the Shipping Forecast for sailors in sea area Plymouth, the body of water into which I am presently trying to avoid tumbling.
Radio 4 on long wave proves much more help for mariners than the next notable edifice, the Lloyds Signal Station. Plain and boxy, except for some natty castellations, it looks fairly harmless - and indeed, it was intended to enhance communication between ship and shore. Before wireless technology became the norm, vessels arriving after long voyages would display flags seeking instructions from their owners about which port to make for. The signal station telegraphed the shipping * * line headquarters, and waited for a reply to signal back to the vessel. The problem: these are treacherous waters, speckled with rocks with names such as The Manacles. Captains faced the nautical equivalent of pausing on a tightrope walk. Many finished up on the rocks while waiting for directions. Over the course of a century, the lifeboats from Lizard Point and the nearby harbour of Cadgwith saved nearly 1,000 souls; their modern replacement, the Kilcobben Cove lifeboat, stands halfway between them. With rails racing down the cliff, the station resembles a theme park ride; except that the reality for lifeboatmen is much scarier.
At Church Cove, at the time Jo is due to be on lookout duty 607 miles away (as the energetic gull flies), I reach two conclusions: that the frontier between land and sea is a tangle of human joy and despair; and the end of my walk.
One thing has always puzzled me about my formidably studious brother: why he should delve into the mysteries of linguistics and artificial intelligence instead of choosing the cushy life of a travel writer? Right now, for example, I am immersed in a blood-warm bath that is perched on a platform, all the better for gazing out of the big picture window of this old rectory. It looks onto a dainty walled garden, the end of which is marked by a tall, slender palm (I bet Jo can't see any tropical trees; he is farther from me than northern Spain). Beyond stands the church of St Wynwallow; in the cloudy panoply of Cornish saints, I like to imagine he was the patron saint of midwinter and/or hot baths. In the distance the land crumbles into the Channel - at least 30C cooler than the water in which I am luxuriating.
Could anything be better than this? Hang on: there's an on/off button. "The Real One. The Only One" it promises - the trademark of the Jacuzzi Corporation. Bliss.
At this stage you may wonder what has possessed a frugal traveller to choose a luxury homestay such as Landewednack House when, as you have just read, a first-class youth hostel is available on the cliff top. Am I getting old, ready any day now for a Saga holiday? Undeniably. But the only way to sleep at the hostel is to rent the whole thing; otherwise it remains closed through the winter. Naturally, I used this as a good excuse to choose the soft option.
Landewednack House also provides a solution to one of the tasks my brother and I had set ourselves. The headland of the Lizard is a source of "scurvy grass" - a natural lawn that, being rich in vitamin C, helps ward off the disease. But my expertise in turf is limited to how well horses run on it, so I choose not to graze. Instead, I could nibble a nasturtium - which, this far south, can survive midwinter in the wild. I cannot countenance picking one of these radiant blooms growing wild, so I ask the chef, Anthony, if I could devour one from his garden. Many guests make a similar request. My verdict: wholesome and delicate, yet intensely peppery (that's the flower, not Anthony).
To work: which, as a travel journalist, means heading for the nearest pub. The Top House presides over Lizard Village. The previous night it had done a good impression (for Cornwall) of Las Vegas; while the Christmas lights burned outside, inside it was both Quiz Night and Euchre Night - the latter being a Cornish card game with rules so arcane that only the locals or my brother can comprehend them. During a quiet lunchtime, you can more easily appreciate the significant feature of the pub: hand-pumps sculpted from serpentine, for which the Lizard is Britain's only source.
In case you ever need it, the number for Britain's southernmost payphone is 01326 290494. Lizard Village also has probably the only post office in the UK with no queue at lunchtime last Wednesday (last collection 4.10pm) and books for sale that include Ley Lines of South West England. I want to track down an equally intangible line, so I head two-and-a-bit miles north, past the southernmost petrol station (only 90.9p a litre, so worth driving here from Caithness).
The Lizard, which is almost amputated from the rest of Britain by the rivers Helford and Cober, is flat - except where it tumbles steeply into the sea. The flatter the land, the bigger the sky, but the southern heavens are scarred by the jet trails. Six miles above Lizard Point is where transatlantic jets "go oceanic" or make landfall.
Only one road reaches down to the Lizard: the A3083. At the point where it crosses the line of 50 degrees latitude, there is no signpost to alert the traveller to the fact that this morsel of rock is the only part of the British mainland below this line. But perhaps there once was: a little further north, the signpost to the Lizard has been broken, leaving only some random fractions to guide the traveller.
For sunset, I plan to change position - edging around the coast to Marazion. But somehow my brother's car-owning gene has eluded me, so I hitch. Frank's is the 11th car to pass my waiting thumb, but the first Mercedes - and first to stop. We pass a 21st-century forest of windmills, and a 20th-century array of satellite dishes. Frank is from Birmingham, but has lived in the Lizard for 40 years. What, I wonder, does he miss about the Midlands? "Nothing."
The ancient market town of Marazion is, unlike the Lizard, on the way to somewhere. Indeed, most visitors are here on their way to a thrust of rock, shooting 258ft heavenwards. St Michael's Mount is attributed to the giant Cormoran, whose heart is buried on the island. There is evidence that the place became a port dealing in tin two millenia ago. One local story claims Joseph of Arimathea came here to trade and brought along his nephew, Jesus Christ.
It is said that a ley line runs from Glastonbury to the Mount. I cannot detect it for the life of me, but I can see a cobbled causeway that, with the sun sinking fast, looks like a yellow brick road. Even today, life in St Michael's Mount is ruled by the cosmos; the gravitational pull of the moon dictates when people can walk on or off the island. The tide is out this afternoon. So at the time Jo clocks off, I walk across to the island topped by a Benedictine priory and a castle. A couple of miles away at Penzance heliport, a thrum of engines announces the departure to an even more southerly and westerly point: St Mary's in the Scilly Isles. Goodness, 4pm: it must be the middle of the night in Caithness.
A beautiful sunset is a study in melancholy. The performance is a mirror-image of dawn. As soon as the sun slides behind the curtain of cloud, night begins to rob the land of its light and colour. It is gone five before the last scarlet flourish is smothered by night, by which time the tide is reclaiming the causeway to the rock. How many unfulfilled hopes, dreams and moments disappear with each day, leaving only a midwinter bleakness full of regrets?
Search me. Where's that pub? I need to drink to the fact that, from tomorrow, the days start getting longer.
Simon Calder reports from Cornwall in the first of his 'Inspirational Britain' journeys in The Heaven and Earth Show, on New Year's Day at 10am on BBC1
He paid £68.50 for a Saver return from London to Penzance with First Great Western, and £55 for a night's B&B at Landewednack House, Church Cove, the Lizard (01326 281000; www.landewednackhouse.com). Jo Calder paid £55 for a family room, including breakfast, at the Seaview Hotel, John O'Groats (01955 611220), and spent a fortune on petrol
58.7 degrees north
"Windswept" was my brother's prediction of my day out. Thanks to gales from the west, that's what I got. It was the kind of day, a local says, when you make sure the roof is tied down, in a place closer to the Arctic Circle than to London. At Dunnet Head, Scotland's most northerly point, the promised winter solstice dawn was just perceptible at two minutes past nine: a chink of orange shone briefly through curtains of grey and black. The wind made it difficult even to get out of the car, and the buckets of rain were just as off-putting.
A brief trip to the summit of the Head, topped with the remnants of military and coastguard operations, offered glimpses of sweeping bays, breakers erupting against headlands, black columns of rain, for a time drenching someone else rather than me, and dim island silhouettes.
My wait in the car for a better photo opportunity was curtailed, however. I had never experienced so much movement in a stationary car with its handbrake on, and grew increasingly anxious about the prospect of unintentional flight. So I set off down the road to carry out one of the tasks that Simon and I had agreed: to find the most extreme phone box. Local opinion suggested that the most northerly stands just outside the late Queen Mother's summer residence at Mey. Perhaps she had a footman with a supply of 10p pieces. You can find out if anyone's there by calling 01874 851258.
Like most places north of Wick, Mey is a cluster of houses in a flat landscape. Caithness was at the heart of bargains and brawls between Scottish and Viking kings. The flat middle of north-eastern Caithness is edged by higher land and cliffs, as at Dunnet, Duncansby and Noss Head, each finished off with proud Victorian lighthouses. Earlier castles and strongholds tend to be located towards the middle of inlets - maybe it's easier to keep the roof on there.
John O'Groats is 15 miles or so to the east of Dunnet Head; nearby Duncansby Head is the UK mainland's most north-easterly point. John O'Groats post office will whisk your letters away any time up until 2.30pm, and can also sell you unleaded at 96.9p a litre. Opposite is the Seaview Hotel. I stayed there on solstice eve, and noticed it seems to have its roof tied on. Its lounge looks north and east. There I met Walter, whose family runs the hotel. He retains an enthusiasm about the beauty and drama of the place, even in the dark and quiet days, pointing out the parade of lighthouses around the Pentland Firth.
A single malt is produced at the most northerly distillery, Pulteney, a few miles down the road to Wick. The malt has an envelope of flavour, rather like the first note of "I Feel Fine", and it is well complemented by a pint of Boddingtons for £2.10.
John O'Groats even dispenses Costa Coffee. A double latte will keep you awake, but perhaps not long enough for the next ferry to Orkney, which is a few months away.
The rain gives way to showers with a bright, low sun, the sky just paler than the blue of quails' eggs. Above the lines of breakers and white horses of sea area Fair Isle, some of the islands are now visible: Stroma, Flotta, Hoy and the Skerries. Hues of grey from rocks and clouds, the sea chalk-blue beneath the breakers, the buff, peaty ground, deep greens of lichen, conifers and gorse. Gorse flowers provided my natural snack, bright yellow specks with a taste of mild pea. I'm told they're nutritious, but you'd need an awful lot for a festive meal. As for satisfaction, I've enjoyed the wine from them rather more.
Back to Dunnet Head for sundown and the only other sign of activity is a fuel barge battling westwards fully laden. Its difficult progress is a reminder: only for the past couple of hundred years has the journey from Britain's northern to southern extremes been quicker and safer by land than by sea.
As the sun went down at 3.19pm, unseen but leaving a fiery crown high in the sky, a black column of rain enveloped the barge. And me. Perhaps next June, I shall suggest to my brother that we change places for midsummer.
Jo Calder
