UFO Info Week-End

Perhaps fortunately it was pulled down in 1920 when the site was bought by the Soci? Jersiaise

Perhaps fortunately, it was pulled down in 1920 when the site was bought by the Soci? Jersiaise.Just as we were about to leave, the curator dropped a bombshell. “Did you know that there’s an astronomical alignment here?”, he asked. “At the spring and autumn equinoxes, the rising sun shines directly into the passage grave.”We were staggered. Midsummer and midwinter alignments – as at Stonehenge – are relatively common. The trick is to align your stone arrangement with the furthest southern and northern setting points of the sun on the horizon.

But working out when spring and autumn begin is much more sophisticated, because it’s hard to judge when we’re a quarter and three-quarters of our way around our orbit about our local star. It requires considerable knowledge to build a monument that aligns with the rising sun at an equinox. And yet Neolithic humans did it in Jersey 6,000 years ago.Then the curator made a fantastic suggestion: the next day was 21 March – the Spring Equinox. Would we like to come to a small press gathering and watch the sunrise pouring into the tomb? Would we indeed. Now – we think we’re rational, scientifically-trained people, but events later that day started to take a more sinister turn. Back at the Nicolle Tower, Nigel looked at the map and discovered that there was another tomb about half a kilometre away. He walked to the stones (the mound had been removed by the Victorians), and discovered that the tomb pointed directly towards the recumbent stone upon which the Nicolle Tower was built – in an east-west alignment.

Another amazing coincidence, and possibly another rare indicator of the Spring Equinox. We decided to eat in that night, and ordered a pizza to go from nearby St Helier. We gave the delivery man a quick guided tour of the Tower, and he confessed to us that he’d volunteered to drive out because he was fascinated. When he was a child, his mother had told him never to go there – she’d told him that there were legends of rampant witchcraft.We didn’t sleep easily in our beds that night, what with rumours of witches and an impending equinox.We woke at 5am and hurried to La Hougue Bie. But the sea mist had rolled in, and the sun was nowhere to be seen. As we left, we learnt something fascinating from the staff at La Hougue Bie There’s actually a piece of Jersey in England.