3 New Lights

When Gill came back the other night from taking the dogs to their run she remarked on a couple (it turned out to be three) new lights on the opposite ridge of the valley. At first we thought it might be a late night silaging session but the following night they appeared again - and they stayed.

A little thinking and a little investigation revealed that the council have installed road lighting on the Kastellos to Dramia road that runs on the other side of the ridge and in one place the ridge dips sufficiently to reveal 3 of these lights to our gaze.

Light pollution! When we first moved into this house there were no lights visible from our balconies save one or two in Kastellos village which is a good 5 kilometers to the south. In fact the first time we switched on a light here we attracted every moth and light loving insect for a 20 kilometer radius. The balcony soon disappeared beneath a blanket of insect life. We had to extinguish the light and go out to a taverna until they left.

A year or three later the roads authority erected massive sodium lamps on the main highway a kilometer or so to the north. This was the beginning of the end of our isolation although it took them a good year to get them working reliably at night rather than during the day.

And this winter the local council put road lights on our track - just 3 of them but ...

OK, we can still see more of the milky way than we had ever seen before moving here. Yes, we do have hundreds of thousands of stars visible on a clear night. Yes, we can navigate our garden by moonlight at full moon and check out the roof fittings in its shadow.

And as I write this it occurs to me - who else would notice 3 new street lights more than a kilometer away? We are lucky.