A frost covered landscape around Newgrange.

A small band of megalithic travellers make their way to the Loughcrew hills after a hearty warm breakfast. Loughcrew is much further inland and remains mist covered all morning.

Megalithic art inside the passage of Cairn T at Loughcrew.

Young and old share a good dose of enthusiasm for the ancient tombs, perhaps for different reasons!

The Blitz crowd 2007.

Around 3pm that afternoon, the crowd begins to swell inside the chamber of Dowth South, the third and least well known of the major Boyne passage tombs. Unlike Newgrange, Dowth South is orientated so that the winter sunset enters the chamber and illuminates the back wall for a few weeks around the solstice.

What is usually a small, intimate gathering has been bolstered due to the publicity during the webcast at Newgrange that morning.

Without warning, at about twenty past three, the first flickers of sunlight begin to fall on the chamber floor. There is hushed excitement as the light wanes and re-appears, only a fraction of the sunlight can penetrate the heavy tree cover in front of the passage.

The crowd husltes closer to catch a glimpse.

The ray of light slowly reaches further into the back of the chamber, as the tress sway in the light breeze the broken beams dance across the clay floor.

As the sun falls lower still, a fortuitious gap allows a much stronger beam to burn through, the highlight of the evening.

Like watching an athelete barely stumbling to the finish line of a marathon, the crowd wills the beam to reach the backstone and make its final climb up the rear wall.