Why there's nowhere better to look up than Britain – plus the best stargazing locations on home soil

Something strange happened on the way to the pub: the sky burst into life. Walking down the unlit lane through the barely lit village on the edge of the inky North Sea, I was blindsided by the depth of the darkness and, with every passing second, by the intensifying brightness up above. Every time my eyes scanned a different patch of the heavens, a new pinprick appeared, as if by merely looking I was magicking the stars; every glimpse conjured another constellation, another fanciful...