Seeing Saturn

This week we went camping to Kielder for Kev's birthday so I thought I would tell you all about our adventure.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon and after putting up the tent (in about 2 minutes, hello pop up!) we then played cards for about an hour and then headed over to the pub about 3 minutes walk away and had ourselves some burgers and some pints at the Anglers Arms. While we waited for our food we were joined by some pub dogs who sat with us for a while. 

Me and Kev then must have slept for a good 10 hours each. After the first 3 hours we were let down by our air bed, there was no visible punctures but nevertheless we were laying on the floor. 

Friday morning we started the day at the pub for a breakfast with our favourite puppies. 

Then headed up to the Kielder Castle, which wasn't really much of anything. So we went for a drive, first to the Kielder lake dam, which is the birth place of the Tyne, it's pretty spectacular to look at.

We then found a viewing point, which you could see for miles but it was pretty drizzly so the pictures weren't that great.

On a whim we went on a trip to Hawick to see Kev's auntie Carol and her husband Derek, we'd attended their wedding just over a year ago. They didn't expect us showing up but treat us to our dinner at a Spoons. It was a lovely afternoon. 

Instead of staying overnight we decided to pack up the tent and go home after the event we were going to that night.

The observatory was really the main reason which we went to Kielder, I'd booked us a place on the 'deep space observation' event at the observatory. Kielder is in a dark skies protected area, which means that there is a strict red light policy so there are no streetlights, no house lights visible and very few car lights. The observatory is miles away from everything so there's no light pollution at all. It means that at night there's SO many stars visible to the naked eye compared with at home. It was extraordinary. I think my most used phrases were 'oh my god' 'that is amazing' 'I am in awe'.

In the evening I saw SATURN with my own two eyes...

I saw the Whirlpool Galaxy

I also saw a cluster of stars which were 23 million lightyears away called M13

I would recommend ANYONE going at all, no matter what understanding of space and science you have. Kev could talk your head off about space, whereas I have a general understanding of space. We both got a lot out of it and thouroughly enjoyed ourselves. We 100% want to go again.

Steph xxx