Yes, I was a Lumenator in Green Space Dark Skies’ Maiden Castle short film which was released late last week! It’s the first time – and probably the last time – I’ve ever added a video to a playlist called Videos I Appear In That I Didn’t Make Myself and I don’t even actually appear in it!
That’s from your point of view. From my point of view, this was last night and I’m spending a chunk of today having a daytime bath for once because I’m tired and sticky with sweat and suncream. Mostly suncream.
Saturday started at quarter to seven in the morning. I’d agreed to an archery session for a Brownie camp, where the county archery kit is kept. It’s cheap at £1 per head but some poor fool (me!) has to spend an hour in the blazing sun setting up the range beforehand and another hour taking it down afterwards and because it’s essentially a field, the grass is long enough to guarantee lost arrows. I never lose arrows on any other range!
I got home about 1.40 – yes, two hours of teaching took a disproportionate chunk out of my day, what with the range, the summer traffic and the ludicrous number of roadworks between the campsite and home. I was due on the Lumenator shuttle bus at 3.30, which could take hours to reach in mega summer traffic. After a long morning in a field, my clothing plans for the event were abandoned. Yeah, I needed warm enough clothes for the evening; I might be out until midnight, but anything other than a flimsy skirt and bikini top seemed guaranteed to hospitalise me with heat exhaustion at that point in the middle of the afternoon after the archery. Don’t worry, I didn’t wear it! I wore my favourite lightweight jumpsuit with a bright yellow t-shirt calculated “to stand out on camera”, as requested in the info email. Hiking boots became mountain sandals and I took a pair of thick colourful stripy socks to wear later in the evening if my feet got cold.
And so we reach the relevant bit!
Green Space Dark Skies is a kind of art project, where people take to their local Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty or National Park at dusk and move together with purpose-made Geolights. The result becomes a short film meant to show our outdoor spaces in a new way and make people think about their relationship with them. To protect the landscape, the destination is a secret and you meet at a shuttle bus location to be taken to the bit of landscape where all this happens.
I was at the Dorset AONB and our meeting point was Maumbury Rings, a hillfort within Dorchester, the county town. Where were we going? Since the bus was at 3.30 and the event starts about 8, my dad – who doesn’t understand the concept of “shuttle bus” (despite spending at least two days a week enjoying his retirement by driving buses) – thought we were going a good couple of hours away. I knew it would be pretty local, no more than about 20 minutes on the bus but I had no idea where – until they released the Lagan Valley AONB short film ten days before the Dorset one was filmed, at the Giant’s Ring, a Neolithic henge monument near Belfast. Then it all fell into place. We were going to be shuttled just down the road to Maiden Castle! Of course we were! Where else could it possibly be?
Maiden Castle is one of the biggest Iron Age hillforts in Europe despite being so close to the modern town that there’s a school a two-minute drive away and a large Tesco a five-minute drive away. It’s been expanded and altered over the last two thousand plus years and is now surrounded most of the way by three deep ditches and four ramparts, with its entrances at the east and west ends a bit of a labyrinth, designed to make sure someone spots intruders before they make it to the gate itself. It’s a big ridged grassy hill now but in its heyday it would have been bare chalk. I imagine it as looking a bit like something out of the Lord of the Rings – Minas Tirith, perhaps, a great white gleaming citadel looming over the world as it was. I know now they picked Maumbury Rings as the pick-up point because it’s a quick and easy walk to Dorchester South station which is practical for the buses without overwhelming the station with Lumenators milling around waiting, but it felt fitting to start the adventure at a hillfort before heading to another hillfort – and the Guide camp where I did the archery lesson is within another, admittedly less-obvious hillfort, so that was three in one day.
Not that the people gathering us at Maumbury would admit where we were going. The lady who met me even went as far as “I can’t tell you and if I did, I’d have to kill you”, which, frankly, confirmed my suspicions. Then, as I was trailing out of the Rings to walk down to the bus, I met my friend Catherine’s parents. Should have known they’d be there – they’re both ecologists (doctors of it, in fact!) and of course they’re into all things nature, outdoors and green spaces. Even better, hopefully Catherine herself would be coming! I’ve known Catherine since we were thirteen – she’s made guest star appearances on this very blog in Italy 2000, a nature lesson walk and the latest Christmas Adventure – and considering we only live an hour apart, we see lamentably little of each other.
We got on the bus and drove down the road. Turned right onto Maiden Castle Road which goes down to some residential streets, the aforementioned school and then a dead end at the huge hillfort. Oh look, we’re going to Maiden Castle. Such surprise.
At the gate we were given a big coloured sticker – I was Team Red, the Abbotts, and later Catherine, were Team Light Blue – and we were sent to register, grab our Geolights and in-ear monitor and then to find our team’s Movement Captain for the first rehearsal. We were going to move within the landscape, all together, holding the lights and those lights in the dark would be in the short film, but first we had to learn the moves.
We did a Namaskar, a salute to the sun, the Earth and the people around us. We walked in and back out. We walked in a circle. We made a figure-of-8 with the lights. We did a Mexican wave. And last, we walked in a figure-of-8. Ours went ok but Team Light Blue apparently didn’t seem to know what they were doing. Team Red also walked out backwards whereas everyone else seemed to turn round when they got to the middle and walk out forwards. When I rejoined Catherine and her parents, there was much discussion of the inconsistencies in the movement instructions and of the differences between our Movement Captains.
We were told that a second wave of each colour would be arriving, taking us to around one hundred per team and those of us who’d been at the first rehearsal could show the newcomers what to do. After that, we were pretty much free until 8pm.
It was a bit of a miniature festival atmosphere. A lot of people in a small field, with a tent for collecting lights and monitors and craft activities, a tent for tea and biscuits and the various DJ sets, including our star musician Isaiah Dreads, who was doing the music for the events, and an assortment of gazebos. Just up the hill after the rehearsal field was a collection of Aeolian instruments, wind-powered musical instruments which make weird sighing and groaning and singing music.
We watched the gate for the other 50 Reds and Light Blues. A few arrived on later shuttle buses – I’d have had time to breathe that afternoon if I’d been assigned to one of those! – but not fifty of them. 100 Lumenators on each of eight colour teams plus local choirs and dance groups would take it up to around 1000 participants on the hill in the dark. We were Red and Light Blue. We knew there was a Dark Blue. There was a Burgundy, which was pretty indistinguishable from Red. There was Pink, which looked like the Red stickers had been left in the sun too long. Yellow, Brown and White made up the rest, I think. Or was there Orange? Anyway, several of the colours were too similar to each other which made it difficult to tell whether newcomers were additions to Red or were separate teams. But even so, we definitely didn’t seem to double in numbers as the afternoon went on.
There was no sign of any actual performers. They’d been mentioned and we’d seen bands and choirs and dance groups on the films released so far but if they were here, they weren’t at the evening event. Neither was there a second rehearsal. Well, not for each full team. Catherine’s dad spotted seven or so people rehearsing later on but it seems anyone who arrived after about 4pm had to make it up once the real thing started.
We finally gathered at the foot of the hill under our coloured flags a bit after 8, had some nonsense that included the phrase “enjoy the collective effervescence” and can’t have set off much before 8.30. Red were at the top of the collective so we were in the lead. That is, I was in the lead. I led us through the entrance labyrinth and we stopped dead at the sight of the event ambulance parked across the track. Did we squeeze past it or go round to the right? Then our Movement Captain came up, all officious and full of “You’ve gone the wrong way, can you stay with the main group please?”. I find it’s very easy for the nice words “please” and “thank you” to sound very aggressive and she was very good at sounding the ruder the more times she used them. Those of us who’d come up this way were all genuinely nettled by it, especially as we could see the flags rounding a corner and coming towards us. Less than thirty seconds and the main group would be on top of us again. “No, you have to stay with the main group. Come back this way, please!”. It’s a month later and I’m still angry about that.
And by the time we’d ambled with the slow-moving column back around the correct side of the labyrinth we were back exactly where we’d been stopped. It’s a hillfort. We’re going to the top of the hillfort. It’s behind that rampart and whichever way round you come, there’s no other way to end up on the top than here! Tell me you’ve never been to Maiden Castle without telling me you’ve never been to Maiden Castle. Tell me you’ve never been in charge at an event too.
I have to say, though, standing on top of the hillfort a few minutes later, with the sun at eye-level, watching a horde passing you through the narrow bottleneck of an entrance, with flags fluttering in the breeze, waiting for yours so you know where your team is gathering, it did kind of look like an army preparing itself to defend the fort. Even crouching to touch the Earth and feel the history didn’t transport me 2200 years back in time like watching those flags silhouetted above the heads of hundreds of people marching on the hillfort.
We gathered on the top in large team circles. Despite the debacle getting up, we’d made such good time that it wasn’t dark enough to start up the Geolights. Surprise surprise. It was a hot clear evening on June 10th and three nights away from a full moon. It would barely be dark by the time we were due to descend. We’d wondered what we’d do between 8 and darkness. Stand around and wait, apparently. I counted Team Red – 61 of us. Long way from the promised 100. Light Blue were right next to us and Catherine counted 55 of them. Still no sign of performers. Assuming 60 to a team, which seemed generous when the team on Red’s other side barely seemed to have 20, that would take us up to a total of less than 500, less than half of the supposed 1000.
At long last, the lights started to come on. They’re remote-controlled with GPS chips so they can change colour and pattern and make pictures within the landscape. Out of Red’s 61, however, 23 of the lights had failed to come on before people were rushing around replacing them. That’s what we do until it gets dark, it seems: swap lanterns and press buttons on lanterns until fully half an hour later, everyone has a light in some shade of pink. White and blue ones were replaced, orange ones were reprogrammed and at last, everyone had a pink light in their arms.
The movements in the twilight were relayed to us through the earpieces. It was helpful to know exactly what each instruction meant and looked like but most people could have followed it without rehearsal. There was no smooth transition between the movement sets. This wasn’t a graceful dance; it was being filmed and would be cut together, going from individual close-ups to wide shots to drone shots and plenty of others. There was no need for beautiful elegant transition. “Do this move then this one. Good. Now we’re going to do this. Good. Now this.”
I was a bit disappointed we didn’t make use of the colour-changing lights. They remained pink (or pink-ish) throughout. It will probably look lovely but I imagined a dancing rainbow on the hilltop. We finished with a teardrop or dewdrop formed around a big hole in the hilltop and then it was over. Make your way down safely by the light of your Geolight and I hope the people who need to catch the train in 20 minutes got to the shuttle bus quickly enough.
I lost Catherine. She’d been directly opposite me in the dewdrop but when I went to join up with her to walk down, all three of them had vanished. I conclude they were right at the front because I made my way nearly to the front and then waited at the bottom for a double selfie with Geolights on and they weren’t behind me. The shuttle buses had come well-spaced throughout the afternoon but now 500-1000 people were trying to leave at once and organised chaos reigned for a while. I’d parked in the big car park opposite Maumsbury Rings and the station so I had a two-minute shuffle back to my car and got home just before midnight, I think.
I should have gone to Maiden Castle today to see it by daylight and see how well they left no trace but yesterday was a very long day in very hot sunshine. Today I’m doing nothing more strenuous than writing this blog and washing off four layers of suncream.
And now, a month and a few thousand words later, would you like to see the short film that came out of all this?
If you look really closely, you can see me at 2:17. The circle is team Red and I’m over towards the right, on the top level, wearing a yellow hoodie and white hat:
