When Wee Walks Belfast won the Lottery (no, not that one)

Apparently over sixteen thousand people entered the annual Solstice Lottery to get access to the chamber at Newgrange on one of five mornings during the Winter Solstice during the sunrise when the rising sun floods the chamber with light for about 17 minutes before slowly retreating again, if it’s not cloudy (spoiler alert – it was!) Newgrange is a Neolithic monument in the Boyne Valley, County Meath and was constructed about 5,200 years ago (3,200 B.C.E) which makes it older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza. 

I was lucky enough to be one of six people to win a ticket for the 22^nd of December 2025 along with one guest, so me and Mini Wee Walks Belfast headed down to stay overnight in Navan, which is close by, before heading to the Bru na Boinne Visitors Centre for 7.30 am where we got a special pass and a wee gift bag with two breakfast vouchers for after the experience. After taking a bridge across the River Boyne we were then bussed over to Newgrange along with our guide, John Clarke, who is the chief guide at Newgrange and John led us into the chamber at around 8.45am. It was a tight squeeze through the wee passageway before entering into the chamber which is filled with megalithic art and ancient graffiti. Sadly, it was too cloudy for the chamber to fill with natural light, but as John pointed out, the light is still there behind the clouds even if you can’t see it. The wonders of modern technology meant that a small beam of artificial light shone into the chamber instead, illuminating the darkness from 8.58am to about 9.15 before retreating away, and this only happens for five days a year. The precision of Newgrange's construction is awe-inspiring and the alignment of the passage with the winter solstice sunrise indicates an advanced knowledge of astronomy and a connection to the earth that we perhaps don’t have any more. After a little more time in the chamber (we were probably in there for an hour in total) we came out into the daylight to get the bus back over to the Visitors Centre for breakfast before hitting the road back to Belfast.

It’s a shame we didn’t get to experience the natural light coming in, but I suppose our weather being the warm mild greyness we get for about nine months of the year (thanks global warming!) means that it’s probably more often overcast than not. It was still an amazing experience that I’ll never forget and left me with lots to think about and I’ll definitely go back to the Boyne Valley next year for another look around.

If you want to try your luck at getting into the chamber next year, the 2026 lottery is now open and you can enter here https://solsticelottery.ie