Autumn Equinox

Location:
The Lizard Peninsula
Kynance Cove
​Helston Boating Lake

Photographer: Rowena Castillo Nicholls
​Videographer: Rob Nicholls

To welcome AUTUMN, me and Rob went on a "DAY OUT" in the Lizard Peninsula.

Our first stop is Great Britain's most southerly point, The Lizard Peninsula. We went for a walk on the cliffs and on the beach. We even saw 2 Cornish Choughs showing off their amazing acrobatic flights. We also saw loads of the famous serpentine stone along the footpath, a unique metamorphic rock which is dark green veined with red and white. Our next stop was Kynace Cove, one of the most picturesque cove in Great Britain. Our last stop was in Helston Boating Lake to see the Grey Phalarope, but unfortunately, it was not there today. All in all, we had a fantastic and fabulous day despite the dark clouds and drizzles.

Autumn Equinox 2017 in Northern Hemisphere will be at 21:02 today, Friday, 22 September.

On the two equinoxes every year the Sun shines directly on the Equator and the length of day and night is nearly equal – but not exactly.

The September equinox marks the moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator – the imaginary line in the sky above the Earth’s equator – from north to south and vice versa in March.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the fall equinox marks the first day of fall (autumn) in what we call astronomical seasons. There's also another, more common definition of when the seasons start, namely meteorological definitions, which are based on average temperatures rather that astronomical events.

The Lizard (Cornish: An Lysardh) is a peninsula in southern Cornwall. It is the most southerly part of the British mainland, is a place apart. Lizard Point is mainland Britain's most southerly point, infamous as a site of shipwrecks in the past and overlooking what is still one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

A combination of the mild maritime climate and complex and unique geology has produced an area with a distinctive character, well known for its rare and unusual flora and where the famous call of the Cornish Chough is never far away. 

The Lizard peninsula is also renowned as the birthplace of modern communication, where Marconi undertook some of his pioneering radio experiments. These experiments are celebrated at the Marconi Centre at Poldhu and the Lizard Wireless Station at Bass Point, a short walk along the coast path from Lizard Point.

Known as the Lizard complex, the peninsula's geology is the best preserved example of an exposed ophiolite in the United Kingdom.

An ophiolite is a suite of geological formations which represent a slice through a section of ocean crust (including the upper level of the mantle) thrust onto the continental crust.

The Lizard formations comprise three main units; the serpentinites, the "oceanic complex" and the metamorphic basement.

Daphne du Maurier based many novels on this part of Cornwall, including Frenchman's Creek.

The Lizard was featured on the BBC television programme Seven Natural Wonders as one of the wonders of the South West, and on the BBC series Coast.

In James Clavell's novel Shogun, ship's pilot Vasco Rodrigues challenges John Blackthorne to recite the latitude of the Lizard to verify that Blackthorne is a fellow seaman.

The Jennifer McQuiston 2015 novel The Spinster's Guide to Scandalous Behavior is set primarily in the fictional village Lizard Bay on the Lizard in the mid-nineteenth century.

In the television adaptation of "Horatio Hornblower", an order is given to "Weather the Lizard" in the episode Hornblower:Mutiny.

"Lizard Point" is also a track on the 1982 album Ambient 4: On Land released by Brian Eno.

Kynance Cove (Cornish: Porth Keynans, meaning ravine cove) is a cove on the eastern side of Mount's Bay, Cornwall. The cove became popular in the early Victorian era, with many distinguished visitors including Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and the poet Alfred Tennyson. The BBC has described Kynance Cove as "one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the South West."

Kynance Cove is part of the West Lizard Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and is in the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Kynance Cove was the venue for the first British record of Porter's rustic (Athetis hospes), a rare migrant moth from southern Europe.

Kynance Cove features in the 2015 production of Agatha Christie’s, And Then There Were None, a period drama of three daily episodes first broadcast on 26 December 2015. It is also used as a location for the TV series Poldark (2015 TV series), as Ross Poldark’s beloved Nampara, and in the The Return of Sherlock Holmes episode The Devil's Foot.