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 join-the-dots of ancient serpents, centaurs or gods.

I was star-struck, but in the best possible way. I’d come to North Norfolk to walk along its coast path, drawn by birds and beaches, Blakeney seals and Cromer crabs. I hadn’t factored in the nightlife. But this rural, industrially sparse, open-horizoned part of Britain is, I have since discovered, one of the best places in the country for astronomy.

Within the Norfolk Area of Natural Beauty (norfolkcoastaonb.org.uk) there are two Dark Sky Discovery Sites, which are among the few places in the UK where you easily see the Milky Way or the full constellation of Orion with the naked eye. Here I was, a world-ranging traveller, having an out-of-this-world experience barely 40 miles (64km) from Norwich – the city of my birth.