Under the Guernsey stars

From dark skies to wild coastlines and magnificent gardens, Antonia Windsor revels in the Bailiwick’s spectacular natural world

- Antonia Windsor

KEEP looking right above that tree and you’ll begin to see it in a minute,’ says Reg Guille, secretary of the Sark Astronomy Society. I follow where his hand is pointing to a lazuline patch of night sky. Slowly, a pin-prick of light emerges and gradually gets brighter until it is nearly as bright as the moon. It is moving slowly but determinedly across the great expanse of stars above us. ‘That’s the International Space Station,’ Mr Guille says with all the excitement of a seven-year-old having found a piece of missing Lego. I watch in awe with the huddle of other astro-enthusiasts standing shoulder-to-shoulder in Sark’s shed-like observatory at the end of a hayfield. ‘It’s travelling at a little more than 17,000 miles per hour. They might be able to make out the lights of St Peter Port in Guernsey if they look out the window —but they won’t see us because we are dark.’

Ten years ago, in the autumn of 2011, Sark became the world’s first designated Dark Sky Island. There are no cars, so, when darkness falls, it isn’t broken by street lighting or vehicle headlights and the population of about 550 people know not to direct any outdoor lights up into the firmament. ‘We are coming up for our 10-year anniversary,’ notes Mr Guille. ‘Each year, we have to submit paperwork to prove we remain dark.’ That’s not a hard task because things don’t change fast on Sark, which operated a feudal system of government as recently as 2008 and has a tractor-drawn fire engine and ambulance. Stumbling out of the observatory, I notice a hedgehog curled up in the grass by my bicycle. As I turn on my bike light to get a closer look, I wince: my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I cycle off with the light transforming the dark path into shades of grey, like a pencil drawing.