An illuminating moment on the road

Serendipitous moments are part and parcel of the life of a traveller.

Quite simply, sometimes stuff happens that you don’t bank on. And although unpleasant surprises may occasionally occur on the road, as they do at home, they’re balanced out, or mostly outweighed, by unexpected events and encounters to cherish.

Now, admittedly, I didn’t anticipate anything special as I began walking by a Manchester canal after dinner on a crisp Sunday evening in the middle of the northern winter.

It’s barely 7pm but the sun had set hours ago and the darkness and relative quietness of the surrounding streets make it seem much later.

Then something peculiar happens.

Up ahead, in the east of Manchester, past a flurry of new high-rise flats and converted cotton mills, the sky begins to glow pink. As we shuffle further on, the colour becomes more intense, the pink almost turning purple.

“It couldn’t be, could it?” was the question running through my head and which I now utter out loud to my partner beside me.

“The Northern Lights?” she replies, hopefully.

Surely not.

I recall being in Iceland several winters ago and spending a week searching, mostly in vain, for the aurora borealis. On one occasion, a fellow traveller armed with an expensive camera kit managed to capture a pretty decent streak of green in the sky, but with the naked eye you could barely make anything out.

But this, right here, right now, is different; so striking, so magical, so weird.

We pause by a quaint old lock-keeper’s cottage and survey the scene ahead, the water of this late 18th-century canal bathed in pink-purple. The radiance fans up behind the lit-up windows of a nearby Victorian textile factory-turned-apartment block, its chimney a brilliant silhouette.

As I snap a few pictures (you’ll see them with this story) I hear a voice behind me.

“Excuse me. Could you take our photograph, please?” It’s a grinning young man poised to hand me his phone, ready to pose with his female companion, who has an even broader smile.

Like us, they reckon they’ve struck gold and have been backdropped with something special to share with their family and friends via social media.

“Northern Lights?” he asks, enthusiastically.

“I think it might be,” I reply, although I still half-suspect this is too good to be true. We’re in the city, after all, and although aurora sightings aren’t that uncommon in Britain between October and March — even in metropolitan sprawls like London and Manchester — the light pollution usually makes it harder to see them in built-up urban areas.

There’s also the added issue of east Manchester being home to both the Etihad Stadium (the home of Manchester City) and its next door neighbour Co-op Live — Europe’s largest purpose-built indoor arena, which could be getting ready for a big concert.

But I check online for football fixtures and gig listings and it appears nothing significant is happening in that direction tonight.

For the next few days, I continue to think I stumbled across the aurora borealis on a random Sunday evening stroll in the north of England.

Then an article on the BBC News website grabs my attention. It is headlined “Why are there pink skies in Greater Manchester?”

Initially hopeful, my heart starts to sink as I read how this “mysterious pink glow” was not in fact the product of a natural phenomenon. It was instead caused by LED lighting rigs installed to enhance the pitch at the Etihad Stadium.

A similar glow had also been spotted 30km away, around the Toughsheet Community Stadium, home of Bolton Wanderers.

This type of lighting, it transpires, attempts to replicate the natural sunlight that is usually sorely lacking in this part of the world in winter, helping to grow the grass and maintain the quality of the surfaces in England’s top football leagues.

Most pitches are now light years away from those you saw in the olden days (the 20th century), when matches were regularly played on mud baths in the damp, dark months of winter.

Oh well. So it turns out we were fooled. But seeing the fake Northern Lights was still an exciting moment. The sky looked amazing and it was a reminder that you never know what travel and life has in store.

That said, I’ll remember to be more sceptical in future when it comes to the Northern Lights. And one of these days, to boost my chances, I really should book an aurora-themed cruise around the Arctic Circle.