There’s something magical about witnessing the dawn of a new day. The thrill of getting up while everybody else slumbers; the peace of having nobody else around; the rich, painterly hues of sunrise filling the skies. Sunrise hikes are the gift that keeps on giving.
As special as sunsets are, once they’ve passed, the day is over. After sunrise, your day is only just beginning and you can languish in that deliciously smug feeling of accomplishment; of having enjoyed stolen moments of pleasure before everyone else has even got up.
Wondering how you’ll get the whole family to buy into the idea of getting up with the larks? Don’t underestimate how easy it is to get children up when there’s something exciting to be getting up for. Nocturnal adventures can make for the best adventures.
Pick the perfect place
The simplest way to try a sunrise hike is to pick somewhere close to home. Look for a high point, or somewhere with a big, clear view that faces east, within an easy walk or drive from your home.
For a good sunrise you need a great view of a wide area, which will probably mean a fairly exposed location, so be sure to wrap up warm.
Corfe Castle at dawn, by Jon Bish ©National Trust Images
Scout out your local sunrise spot in advance during the day. Trails can look quite different in the pre-dawn darkness, so you need to know where you’re parking and the kind of terrain you are dealing with first. See how long it takes to walk up in daylight with the whole family and time the hike so you know how much time to allow. Selecting a short walk is a good idea this early in the morning - Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire or Corfe Castle near Wareham are great examples of stunning sunrise spots that don't require much effort. Ideally you’ll want to get to your chosen sunrise spot a good half hour before the sun is due to rise. That way the stars will most likely still be out and you’ll soak up the full spectrum of sunrise from the intense, vivid reds to the dusky, painterly pinks.
If you’re capitalising on the early start you might expect on a camping trip, try if you can to suss out your spot they day before and try and get some local knowledge about what to expect.
Set your alarm
If you can get the weather window, Spring and Autumn are great for sunrise hikes en famille, mainly because you won’t have to get up as early as during the more reliable days of summer. When the clocks ‘spring’ forward at the end of March, sunrise shifts from bleary-eyed 5:57am to far more do-able 6:55am. It may still feel early but the hour change often coincides with the Easter holidays, making it easier to justify an early start for the children.
Conversely when the clocks go back at the end of October, you have the advantage of gaining an extra hour making the 7.01am sunrise on Sunday 30th, feel like a far more sensible 8.01am.
But the summer holidays might still be simplest for sunrise starts when you have a school-age brood. May half term sunrises will mean dawn at around 5am (the earliest sunrise on midsummer’s day on June 24th will be 4.43am). Leave it until the back end of the school summer holidays and you’re looking at an achievable 6.09am sunrise in London on August 30th. The further west you are, the later you can lie in (it’s a 6.31am sun-up in Truro on August 30th), which makes a sunrise hike a no-brainer if you’re camping in the Westcountry this summer.
Study the sunrise times for your chosen area and decide how early a wake-up call you can all stomach.
Sunrise adventures are always heightened when they are unexpected
Plan for it
Embarking on a dawn adventure with kids in tow is better when you prepare. The last thing you want to be doing at 6am is fumbling for lost mittens or raiding the cupboards for mood-boosting snacks.
So, try and shift bedtime a bit earlier than usual so little kids get enough shut-eye before the big adventure. Hopefully older kids can be persuaded into hitting the sack slightly earlier too to ease the trauma of an early start. Of course, if you’re used to early starts because your toddler is up with the sun anyway, this will be easy.
Pack the paraphernalia the day before, thinking through what you might need and potential pitfalls that could put the mockers on the magic. If you’re heading for the hills, make sure you’ve got hats, gloves and enough gear to keep them cosy. Even in high summer, it can be chilly before sun-up and it’s easy to underestimate the wind chill factor when you set off at sea level.
Make sure appropriate clothes and footwear are already laid out and get children on board with the plans in advance so they know what’s expected when they wake up bleary-eyed. If you pitch it right, the thrill of an upcoming adventure and doing something out of the ordinary will be motivation enough.
Get clever with breakfast and pack porridge bars, bananas and faff-free food that can be eaten on the move. They may not want to eat first thing, but you’ll all be hungry in an hour or so. If it’s likely to be cold, consider throwing in a thermos of warm milk or hot chocolate alongside your tea or coffee that you can quickly fill before you leave. Don’t forget water – fill bottles the night before to save precious minutes in the morning.
It may be starting to get light when you leave home, but pack a torch or headlamps, if only to add to the nocturnal thrill for the kids when you first set off.
Of course, not every adventure has to be planned. If the opportunity for spur of the moment hedonism presents itself (maybe after the whole family wakes to a deafening dawn chorus after a night under canvas), take it with both hands. Sunrise adventures are always heightened when they are unexpected. Seize the moment.
Check the forecast
Getting up early, especially with kids in tow, takes effort, so make sure you do your homework and check the forecast in the days running up to your sunrise hike.
Ideally you want clear skies with high, wispy clouds that showcase dawn at its spectacular best.
‘Most sunrises are pretty, but cloud is probably the most important weather factor for getting a really beautiful one,’ says Alex Deakin, Met Office presenter and meteorologist. ‘Obviously total and thick cloud cover will spoil any sunrise but if there’s no cloud at all a sunrise can be a little boring. So, you need some cloud but not too much.’
For a stunning, sustained sunrise it helps to have a few varieties of cloud at different levels in the sky which become illuminated at different times. In meteorology, clouds are split into three levels: low, medium and high.
‘High and medium level clouds are best for pretty sunrises with cirrus (thin, wispy high cloud) being a well-known sunrise enhancer,’ explains Deakin. ‘Cirrocumulus (high) and altocumulus (medium) both give the classic ‘mackerel sky’ effect.’
The rich colours of a vivid sunrise are created by the sun’s light being scattered by whatever is in the atmosphere between the viewer and the sun. This means that dust particles, smoke particles and other pollution particles all have an effect. The amount of scattering and the resulting colours will depend on the amount and type of molecules and how high up they are.
‘For a really crystal-clear sunrise it’s better to have some rain a few hours beforehand, but then you won’t get as many colours as the air has been ‘cleansed’ of some of the particles that do the scattering,’ says Deakin. ‘It’s about a balance.’
If we're hoping for a good sunrise then we want the weather to be going downhill during the day
To be in with a chance of witnessing a really colourful sky, full of pinks, reds and oranges, watch the weather forecast for a day that starts out fine but is predicted to go downhill a little later on.
There’s some truth in the old expression red sky at night, shepherds’ delight, according to Deakin. ‘Although we are more interested in the next line, as we want red sky in the morning – a warning to our sheep-herding friends that ‘poor’ weather is on the way,’ he explains. ‘So, if we are hoping for a good sunrise then we want the weather to be going downhill during the day. You obviously want the sunrise to be dry and without too much cloud. The ideal set-up would be when a low-pressure system and weather fronts are arriving from the west later that day.’
An approaching weather system throws lots of high cloud ahead of it. Broadly speaking the wispy, sunrise-enhancing cirrus clouds arrive a few hours ahead of the weather front, so if you have a front arriving late morning there’s a good chance of some high cloud at sunrise. The amount of water in the atmosphere (the humidity) will also make a difference to visibility, so look for low humidity for a crisp sunrise.
If you can be flexible with your dawn adventure, pencil in a couple of dates and be prepared to wait for the best weather window.
Tech tips
Tech can be a big help in predicting a stunning sunrise. As well as weather apps like the Met Office app, there are some decent sunrise and sunset trackers aimed at photographers that can help you predict a gorgeous golden hour.
Try SolarWatch Sunrise & Sunset, which tells you when first light will be as well as the actual sunrise, or Alpenglow, which also aims to predict the quality of a sunrise.
The Clear Outside app, designed by and for astronomers, is useful because it zooms in on visibility and cloud cover predictions for your chosen spot. Helpfully for sunrise walkers, it also gives the percentage of high, medium and low cloud cover and relative humidity.
Sunrise over Brimham Rocks, by Paul Kingston ©National Trust Images
MAIN IMAGE: Sunrise over Brimham Rocks, by Paul Kingston ©National Trust Images
*Times correct for 2022 in London, UK.
