Under the night sky

I arrived in what can only be described as a monsoon, I had expected it to be raining, but not like that! I stopped the car, and as I peered out through the window, Hogmanay Plan F disappeared rapidly out of sight. As the strengthening wind whistled through the trees and the road pooled with water, the decision was made, and feeling rather crestfallen, I turned the car round and headed for home.

I think I had been in the house for all of 20 minutes when I sat down at my desk, almost out of habit, and clicked on the forecast. It was now fantastic. Outside, the weather was so shit that it was hard to believe it could change, but I had borrowed a tent and I felt like it was only right that I should use it. I picked up my rucksack, ran down the path through the storm and got back into the car...

Peering out into the darkness a few hours later, I didn't know whether the gamble was going to pay off, but with the cloud thinning and the stars becoming visible, it seemed like a risk I had to take. I am fed up with being too scared to do the things I want to do because I think something bad might happen to me and of feeling that life is passing me by because I have no one to accompany me on the adventures that I long for. But as I walked up that path alone, with the world's brightest torch strapped to my head, I felt no fear at all. 

Several hours later, tent pitched and belly full, the wind had dropped considerably and it seemed a waste to spend the bells sat in my tent, so I set forth towards the hill, map in one pocket and hip flask in the other. Scrambling upwards, the rock was icy and a thickening layer of hail stones lay on the ground. Reaching the steepest cliff, I chickened out - it was 11.30 pm, it was very dark and not one person knew where I was. I sat down on a suitable rock. 

Stars and silhouettes

I tried in vain to capture what I saw from my high perch but nothing could do justice to the sheer beauty of witnessing those thousands of stars and planets shining out above the dark silhouettes of the hills. I heard the cheers ring out at midnight and enjoyed numerous firework displays stretching far into the distance below me. And as I sat on that rock, watching the landscape being illuminated by flashes of light from every direction, and as I stared up at Orion and at the plough, to me, it didn't matter where you were, or how you were celebrating, nothing in the world could possibly be better than being where I was, sitting alone, under that cloudless Lakeland sky.

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