A personal journey

When our original director, Gary Fildes, moved to the area in the middle of  2000, he was amazed at the clarity of the skies, the light pollution free vistas were astounding. He met Pippa Kirkham, an employee of the Forestry England who was charged with promoting "astro tourism" and was asked to host the popular "nightwatch" events held at Kielder Castle. The public support for these events was incredible and quickly snowballed into regular meetings. Gary had been thinking of staging "star camp" events. Aimed at amateur astronomers it was a gathering of like-minded people who would camp out under the stars and share astro stories over a good meal and a drink.The astronomers loved it and established Kielder Star Camp as one of the world's top ten astro parties, helped of course by the pristine skies.