Stone, Sun, and Spirit: My Solstice Journey to Bryn Celli Ddu
- apeach5
- Jul 6
- 15 min read
Updated: Jul 8
I. Introduction
Welcome back to Stone Temple Gardening, where we dig deep into the rich soil of antiquity to cultivate fresh understandings of the ancient world!
Long-time readers will know that I’ve already written four in-depth articles on one of Britain’s most evocative and enigmatic prehistoric monuments: Bryn Celli Ddu. Once a henge and stone circle, now a chambered tomb, it is part of the broader ritual landscape monuments in Neolithic North Wales and Anglesey, many of which still reflect ancient solar rituals and alignments. Bryn Celli Ddu itself was marked by sacred use for thousands of years from the Mesolithic through the Neolithic and Bronze Ages into the Druidic Iron Age.
In Part One with the generous help of local archaeologist and Bryn Celli Ddu expert Dr. Mike Woods, I explored this layered past: from post-Ice Age hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers to Bronze Age metalworkers and the lingering presence of Iron Age Druids still hidden within the landscape.
In Part Two, I examined the site’s lost features—vanished Neolithic mounds, Bronze Age burials, and the wider prehistoric landscape of Anglesey and North Wales—uncovering striking patterns of monument-building and primary interment.
Part Three asked a deceptively simple question: Why here? I explored the sacred geography of the site—its proximity to the River Braint, the dramatic vistas of Snowdonia, and the rare blue schist outcrop known as the Gorsedd, bearing ancient carvings. I argued that these three features formed a natural trinity that conferred sacred status on this place for millennia.
In Part Four, I turned to light, sound, and sky. I analysed Bryn Celli Ddu’s solstitial alignment with the midsummer Sunrise, and an unnamed standing stone I’ve called the Sun Stone, which shares that solstice axis. I also examined the Tyddyn Bach stone on the north-west ridge above the site, aligned with the major lunar standstill—a rare celestial event occurring every 18.6 years. Alongside these, I proposed new theories, including a possible May Day alignment, acoustic phenomena radiating from the Gorsedd, and the idea that the monument may have functioned as a kind of camera obscura, casting solar effects into the chamber.
This new post is both a personal and scholarly response to all the above, following my return to Bryn Celli Ddu for the 2025 summer solstice. I witnessed the dawn firsthand—and it did not disappoint. With Dr. Mike Woods, I also had the rare opportunity to visit the Gorsedd Rock (on private land) to examine its Neolithic rock art more closely, along with the nearby standing stones of Anglesey, the Sun Stone and the Tyddyn Bach stone on the ridge above the site. New revelations were uncovered at all three sites, which I explore further in a companion post to this one. It was at Tyddyn Bach that I joined Dr. Woods’s excavation of a circular anomaly revealed in recent geophysical surveys. This possible new stone circle excavation in Anglesey may offer crucial clues to the landscape's ceremonial past. What was uncovered was nothing short of remarkable—and that story will conclude the next post.
So read on—and enjoy the journey.
II. Return to Bryn Celli Ddu: A 21st Century Voyage into the Ancient Past.
This was never going to be just another visit. After writing nearly 20,000 words on Bryn Celli Ddu—its stones, its secrets, its place in the mind of the ancients—I returned not as a chronicler, but as a pilgrim. I wanted to feel it again. To walk the monument’s skin in silence. To let it speak without the narrow filters of research or theory. I wasn’t seeking new facts, but new meanings, not confirmation, but reconnection. To step beyond the caveated language of academia into the realm of experience—what it means to be at the site, physically, emotionally, and perhaps even spiritually. After all, it was midsummer: the solstice. The same venerated light that once pierced the passage thousands of years ago would soon return—and I would be there to meet it. My new exploration is what some call the phenomenology of place: how a site is felt, experienced and encountered, not merely examined. From laptop and library, to Sun, Stone and Sky.
This time, my journey followed three paths. First, to see the solstice Sunrise—an alignment I had studied, described, and debated, but never fully witnessed from within the chamber itself. I wanted to see the light strike the rose quartz-veined stone. To feel that moment when architecture, sky, stone, and season align.
Second, by the generous invitation of Dr. Mike Woods—whose archaeological work has shaped much of my previous research—I was to join an active excavation targeting a circular anomaly near the Tyddyn Bach standing stone. It may mark the remnants of a lost stone circle and offered the rare privilege of participating directly in the unfolding story of this landscape. And third, I set out to explore the wider terrain: the dig granted me access to private land to visit, for the first time, the blueschist Gorsedd with its ancient cup marks; to stand again before the Sun Stone and Tyddyn Bach; to walk the lines between them and listen closely for what these places might still be trying to say. What I encountered surprised me—not just in alignments or placements, but in subtler patterns and presences I hadn’t expected.
But that part of the story must wait. The insights and revelations I gained at the Gorsedd, the Sun Stone and at Tyddyn Bach will follow in my next post.
So, before those discoveries unfold, my journey begins with a return to Bryn Celli Ddu and a long-awaited solstice dawn.
III. The Pilgrimage to Bryn Celli Ddu.
Evening Arrival: Solitude Before the Light
This is the story of my return to Bryn Celli Ddu for the summer solstice—part memory, part reflection, part encounter with the numinous.
I set off from Leicestershire around lunch time and drove through the dreamy green cloaked villages of Charnwood. A remnant of ancient forest north of Leicester known as “little Switzerland” Charnwood consists of high rocky ground and extremely old exposed rocks. Formerly a Jurassic Sea, littered with the bones of plesiosaurs and the like, it is now a green lung just north of Leicester. I enjoyed the scenic drive before joining the motorway to thread the ribbon of roads from the Midlands to north Wales. The weather was perfect, a warm summer’s day and the light filtered through the mature Oaks that flourish throughout the forest. The Sun’s fingers caressed their canopies of green, dappling my journey with the gold-leafed glow of summer. A relaxing start. Beginnings are important.
After easing into the rhythm of the motorway, I settled into the long haul west. The journey was uneventful until I reached Conwy, a few miles from Anglesey—only to be met by a huge traffic jam. For an hour and a half, I crept forward in the midsummer heat, caught behind a fire that had closed the tunnel running beneath the hills above the town. “You always have to suffer a little on a true pilgrimage” I thought. Eventually, I managed to cross the River Conwy via the old route: through medieval walls, over the span previously occupied by an ancient bridge, and on toward the island. Again, it occurred to me that this pilgrimage was taking the old way to Bryn Celli Ddu.
The Menai Straits posed no further delays as I swept over into Anglesey. I arrived at my campsite in late afternoon, pitched up, and after a restorative shower and meal, I decided to make my way to Bryn Celli Ddu. I had spent the winter researching, writing, and speculating about this place. Now, I was eager to walk its land again. To see it not just with memory, but with renewed eyes.
I arrived at the small car park in the golden glow of the dusk. A charming herd of cows greeted me, lowing in the warm evening light as I proceeded to walk the neatly kept footpath that follows the sacred Afon Braint River toward Bryn Celli Ddu. It was a perfect summer’s evening, the passing hedgerow full of sloe, hawthorn, dog rose and bramble, their blossoms holding the promise of autumn fruits: red haws, rosy-hips, blackberries and the already purple swelling sloe. Below them grew wildflowers of red campion, purple loosestrife, lady’s bedstraw and many others. The last warmth of the day lingered in the grass, and the air was thick with the scent of honeysuckle and Sun-warmed pasture. A gentle breeze stirred the leaves in the silver birches and green hedges that marched along with me to the site. Otherwise, the world was quiet—no other visitors, no voices, just the soft cries of swallows swooping low across the fields and one lonely Buzzard spiralling high in the heavens whose beady eye spied me out from the pure blue blanket of the sky.
As I finally emerged from my green corridor the site revealed itself. Suddenly, it was there: a grass-crowned mound, sitting silently like a Neolithic UFO that had just landed in the rich green sward of Llanddaniel Fab. Bryn Celli Ddu is very evocative. I was charmed anew by its gentle up-side-down bowl-like shape, ringed by a clear ditch and an uneven sash of stones, the reformed remnants of the lost henge and stone circle that preceded the burial mound. I stood utterly alone in reverie before this sacred Welsh wonder. The monument, still and silent, regarded me without judgement before seeming to welcome me back. This was the first time I had returned without notebook or agenda. I had come to feel, not merely to study. And after so much research, this moment felt fresh. I was not studying or analysing. I was meeting an old friend.
I walked the perimeter slowly. To the west I glimpsed the Sun Stone and, beyond it, the Gorsedd—the unusual large outcrop of blueschist from which the tomb and its standing stones were originally hewn. The Sun hung directly behind the rock, dazzling my vision and rendering its form indistinct. I would need to return when the light fell differently. That outcrop, carved with ancient cup marks, may well have been the original sacred site—revered since the Mesolithic, long before mounds were raised. On the ridge above stood the Tyddyn Bach standing stone, and near it, the site of the ongoing excavation. All awaited my visit tomorrow.
Turning back toward the mound, I continued my slow circuit. The tomb’s passage yawned open in shadow, its blueschist lintel smooth from centuries of weather. I paused. As a lover of pareidolia—finding familiar forms in abstract patterns such as stone and shadow—I sought a shape. To me, the lintel, the liminal point of entry, partially veiled in grass, resembled a fish. Markings on its face suggested gills. “A river spirit?” I mused. “A guardian from the Braint?” Perhaps. Or perhaps it was just my poetic mind projecting. I offer the thought not as theory, but as a sensibility—an openness to the idea that ancient builders may have seen what we still sometimes glimpse in stone. In this moment, the monument spoke to me not of data, but of presence, calling for emotion, poetic inspiration and revelation, certainly not certainty. More like a resonance folded into the bones of the earth, nuggets of thought to be mined by the imagination. A tentative reach for epiphany from the mute heart of ancient stone.
Though I knew its angles, alignments, and archaeology by heart, Bryn Celli Ddu now felt somewhat unfamiliar. Not as in forgotten, but as in wild. Like a familiar tree but seen from beneath, peering through its roots and into the sky beyond. What had once been mapped in my mind now pulsed with presence. The monument wasn’t asking to be interpreted. It was simply there—to be felt within as well as experienced with my now heightened senses.
I passed the portal and entered the tomb.
I had forgotten how low it was in there. I crouched and shuffled forward, slightly scraping my scalp on the roof. “A little blood given in payment” I thought… A mysterious low shelf traced my right-hand side as I passed through the tunnel and the stone that was to be the star of the show tomorrow was framed by the passage. I entered the sacred chamber. As I passed through, immediately to my right stood the silent watcher. A standing stone, forever in shadow, sculpted and rounded with bark-like tracings, surviving through millennia, standing guard over the primal burial in front of him below the rock art patterned stone outside. I wondered at this rock, looming in front of me. A powerful presence. From this eternally eclipsed situation he protects the ground beneath, where a carefully layered stone cyst contains the original consecration burial of the shrine. Placed long before stones, mounds or chambers were raised. A burnt piece of hazel, and a single child’s ear bone. The mark of place and kin. I have often reflected and speculated on this local burial practice, as other examples exist (see Part Two). Why an earbone? The smallest bone in the human body? Was this burial designed to link the ancestors to the tribe? Was this a bridge between worlds? To the Listener in the loam…
I stopped and stood quiet for some time, thinking on the deep antiquity of this space, and those who had worshipped and passed through over millennia.
Presently I left the secluded solitude and ventured outside again, circling round to the patterned stone stood over the primal burial. A replica unfortunately, as the original has long been spirited away to the sleepy halls of a museum in Cardiff. Nevertheless, I traced with my fingers along its sinuous serpentine sigils, feeling the flow of its design, pondering the meaning of its voice, like a first thought marking the beginning of Bryn Celli Ddu.
Too soon, my audience with the numinous was over. It was getting dark, the Sun was slipping softly to his bed, and I decided it was my turn too…
III. Solstice Sunrise: Light in the Chamber
I stayed up too late that night, beside the cosy wood fire at my campsite. The stars above Anglesey hung in silence, and the stillness of the land lulled me into a kind of dreamlike wakefulness. I watched Ursa Major—the constellation of the Great Bear—wheel around Polaris, its tail of four stars pointing north, as the sparks from the fire and the Glastonbury Star Child midsummer incense I had lit mingled in the night air…
I finally retired around Midnight, but not for long. My alarm rang at 4 a.m.—just ahead of the solstice dawn. I rose groggily but full of purpose, grabbed a quick coffee, climbed into the car, and drove through the pre-dawn dark along deserted roads to the monument.
A soft mist clung low over the fields as I reached the car park, lending a reflective, mystical note to my arrival. The world was silent but expectant. The cows were no longer in the field as it was milking time, but the air was warm and inviting. I walked the now-familiar green corridor by the Braint alone, the river’s hush beside me, and the dew-heavy grass brushing my boots. Bryn Celli Ddu loomed ahead like a waiting oracle. I was filled with the light of expectancy.
At the time, I thought, “Tomorrow is the summer solstice…”—the longest day of the year, when the Sun appears to pause in His celestial journey before turning back toward winter. The word solstice comes from Latin solstitium — the Sun stands still. For a few days, He lingers at the same place on the horizon before beginning His slow arc back toward winter's rest in December. Thus, the summer solstice is an event that unfolds over several days, with the 21st marking the astronomical centre of the Sun’s repose. I mused that prehistoric peoples probably observed it as a short season not bound by the meticulous modern measure of today, but as an event that spanned more than the one precise date.
Nevertheless, at ancient Stonehenge, people would gather at dawn tomorrow, drums in hand, to greet the rising Sun with reverence and rhythm. Our age is ruled by the hand of Apollo, the golden mean of science holds sway, and the Solstice is seen as just one day.
Today, here on the Isle of Anglesey, something more intimate and rare was about to stir. Here at Bryn Celli Ddu a miracle of light was about to unfold. Just after Sunrise, the Sun would pierce the tomb's narrow passage and strike the quartz-veined stone deep within, illuminating the chamber and charging it with ancient purpose. This solstice alignment, crafted millennia ago, was about to perform again.
I was also aware that tomorrow, hundreds of Druids, pagans, and Sun-chasers would arrive here to witness this sacred moment. But space is limited — the earth can only hold so many hearts at once. So I set off on this pre-solstice morning to avoid the crush and experience a quieter dawn.
And what I eventually saw... was pure magic.
So, I walked on to find, as expected, I wasn’t the only one drawn here to the quieter dawn. Four others stood near the mound—quiet figures in the half-light. They were robed in cloaks, hats, and colourful scarves, their boots dusted with fresh dew. Strangers at first. Pilgrims, like me. By the end, we were all of a kin in awe of what we had just shared. We chatted quietly about the site. One gentleman informed me he had been coming here for decades to witness the Sunrise; for others like me, it was their first time. I looked toward the eastern sky, beautifully patterned with ancestral inks that spilled over the sky in the pre-dawn light. We prepared for the Sunrise.
The five of us quietly entered the tomb.
We stood reverently in the chamber and waited.
Then it happened.
The first touch of gold spilled into the passage—just a thread at first, then a glowing ribbon. The light crept slowly down the narrow corridor like a golden finger pointing into the deep. It struck the rose quartz-veined stone at the back of the chamber, causing it to blush with warmth and the whole space seemed to inhale.
Then, as the Sun rose higher, the beam narrowed—brightening into a piercing, axe-like wedge of brilliance. It was blinding. The chamber filled with light as if the Sun Himself had entered and drawn a shining sigil upon the stone.
For a few breath-held minutes, time stopped.The others stood beside me in reverent silence. We were no longer just observers—we were participants in something older than history, something rehearsed for millennia by the stone and the sky. And then, just as it had come, the light slowly passed. The golden corridor faded. The bright sign shrank to a simple axe shape before the quartz-stone fell back into shadow. The tomb, having momentarily flared into life, returned to stillness.
We emerged blinking from the passage, dazed by morning’s brightness, bound now by shared experience. We’d all felt it: the monument spoke to us of the eternal round—of light and dark, the past and the present, of life and death. Like a ring on God’s finger, the Sun had blessed Bryn Celli Ddu, and we were humbled by His touch.
IV. Conclusion: A Threshold to the Next Journey
As I stood there, blinking in the afterglow of the solstice dawn, Bryn Celli Ddu felt less like a monument and more like a living threshold—a portal between the ancient and the immediate, the seen and the unseen. I could now spy the Gorsedd’s crouching presence in the distance. And the Sun Stone sat in His green chair forever watching the Sunrise. All wove together into a single, vibrant thread: this place is still speaking. It is not a relic frozen in time but a conversation across millennia, inviting us to listen with open hearts and curious minds.
This visit was not an endpoint but a beginning. The Gorsedd, with its ancient carvings, called to me for closer exploration—its blueschist heart pulsing with stories of the Mesolithic and beyond. The standing stones, from the Sun Stone’s solstitial gaze to the Tyddyn Bach sentinel on the ridge, hint at a ceremonial landscape far larger and more intricate than yet fully understood. And the ongoing excavation, with its circular anomaly and the startling finds that awaited me, all promises to peel back yet another layer of this sacred soil.
In my next essay, I’ll delve deeper into these threads—the Gorsedd’s rock art, the standing stones’ silent watch, and the revelations emerging from Dr. Mike Woods’ excavation. I step further into this ancient narrative, where stone, sky, and soil still sing of secrets waiting to be unearthed. The ancient solar rituals of Wales, encoded in alignments and architecture, continue to guide us—if we know how to listen.
Join me as the journey continues, for Bryn Celli Ddu is far from done with us.
Dr Alexander Peach, June 2025
Topics Covered In This Post:
Bryn Celli Ddu, summer solstice alignment, prehistoric Anglesey, Neolithic tombs in Wales, Sun Stone Anglesey, Tyddyn Bach standing stone, Gorsedd blueschist rock art, stone circle excavation in Anglesey, Neolithic pilgrimage site, Mesolithic to Neolithic transition, solstice archaeology, ancient solar rituals Wales, sacred landscape
Links To My Other Posts On Bryn Celli Ddu:
Was it this deserted? I was there on the 19th and there were some people already camping in the fields. I couldn't make it on the solstice, but I got to spend some time alone there. There was a gathering in the afternoon there too, wasn't there?