The week of the winter solstice – Ardgroom Stone Circle, County Cork, Ireland
Ardgroom Stone Circle, County Cork,
Ireland
Nigel Borrington
Ardgroom Stone Circle, County Cork, Ireland
The Ardgroomon stone circle is located on the Beautiful Beara Peninsula, county cork. It has to be one of the most magical of all the Irish stone circle, it also has the best of locations and views, sitting about the Atlantic ocean. There is something so exciting and mysterious about visiting a stone circle. The Ardgroomon circle is located in an area were there is an abundance of these historic sites, as well as wedge tombs, ring forts, boulder burials and fulachta fiadhs.
As well as being used for the Solar Spring and summer Equinox’s along with the Summer and Winter Solstice, many of these stone circles would also log the Movement of the Moon, Planets and Stars as during the year they changed their positions along the horizon. The standing stones in a stone circle would have in combination with a feature on local hill sides, have been lined up with astronomical objects(Sun, moon, planets and Stars). This would have given an almost daily measurement for months of the year.
The reason that ancient peoples needed to log the movement of the heavens was mainly for practical reasons such as farming, they needed to know when to sow seeds, bring cattle down from the mountains and bring in the crops, also they needed to know how long their store of food had to last before the new growing season started, no imports in those days.
Winter colours in December , the month of great sunrises and sunset …….
Irish Landscapes
Kilkenny
Nigel Borrington
December , the month of great sunrises and sunset …….
To-night the west o’er-brims with warmest dyes;
Its chalice overflows
With pools of purple colouring the skies,
Aflood with gold and rose;
And some hot soul seems throbbing close to mine,
As sinks the sun within that world of wine.
A Dream sunset, Cardigan bay, Wales. A Poem : Ode By Arthur O’Shaughnessy
A Dream sunset Cardigan bay
Wales
August 2017 Nigel Borrington
We are like the Dreamer …….
Ode
By Arthur O’Shaughnessy
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams;
World losers and world forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities.
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
St David’s Cathedral, St Davids, Pembrokeshire,Wales : The light from a Golden Dawn
St David’s Cathedral
St Davids, Pembrokeshire
Wales
Nigel Borrington
Images from Outside and Inside of St Davids Cathedral, St Davids, Pembrokeshire, Wales.
The Light from a Golden Dawn ……..
Nigel Borrington 
The week of the Winter Solstice: The Sun Starts to move again after standing Still on the horizon.
End of the Winter Solstice 2017
Nigel Borrington
Today the 24th Christmas eve marks the first day since the 21st that the Sun can be recorded as having moved its position when it setting, on the Horizon. The word Solstice itself means “standing still” and it is an amazing fact of nature that for the three days that follow the shortest day of the year in the North, the Sun does not change the position that it falls below the horizon at in the evenings.
Here are some more details about the Solstice on the web site Space.com : The Sun Stands Still
To mark this event here are some of my sunset images posted here on my blog over the last two years ….
Galley of sunsets
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December 24, 2017 | Categories: Comment, Gallery, Landscape, Mountains, Nature photography, SUn images, The Celtic year, Winter landscape | Tags: astonomy, Christmas eve, December, horizon., Mid winter, Nigel Borrington, Solstice, space, Stars, sun, sunset, winter | 3 Comments