Sunday morning and the alarm chimes at 6:50, half an hour before sunrise. I dress the seven-year-old in his sleep, piggyback him down the stairs, grab a handful of Chanuka candles and set out into the dark. We turn the corner into Cliffe High Street and walk towards Friday’s full moon slung low over the town, before heading south and then east to the deserted Dripping Pan. We reach the Tump, and make the first footprints across the icy white lawns to lean over the town wall and look yonder east. There is a vague orange glow, the pale sky accented by cirrus clouds, plane tracks and a mid-range blur of grey foggy mist. We turn around and begin our spiral ascent of the Tump where we huddle round the small circle of brown earth dug out of the centre of the mound with the three figures who’d arrived before us.

Within minutes of sunrise, numbers swell. Stephanie Carr-Gomm arrives and we set about lighting 19 candles in the centralized brown dug-out in honour of Brighid, the triple goddess of fertility, poetry, fire and water. Stephanie reads a verse imbuing each candle with significance and Dirk plays the pipes. The mist and grey cloud draw in as we finish.

It’s Imbolc, the precursor of the Christian celebration of Candlemas, and the secularized American celebration of Groundhog Day. Imbolc is one of the six weekly cycles of the Wheel of the Year marked out by the The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. It is a breathing space in which to stop and notice the return of light, the first stirrings of life, and a time to develop a deeper and more meaningful relationship with the land and our ancestors. Happy Imbolc - let the spring-cleaning commence! AM