THIS can't go on. Really, it can't. It's 10pm and I'm standing on a muddy Northumbrian hilltop lashed with icy rain. I'm starting to shiver, but I'm also hoping things are about to get warmer. Much warmer.

I'm waiting to be transported to M13, a tight cluster of stars bathed in permanent daylight from 400,000 suns. Tanning should not be a problem.

I'm not being teleported - though Richard Branson is probably working on it - but am preparing to look through the telescope of Kielder Observatory, Britain's latest sky-gazing centre, which opens on April 25.

Perched on top of Black Fell, with a dramatic widescreen view of spruce forests, hills and lake, it scans the country's darkest sky, a deep, inky window on the heavens.

Apart from the occasional car headlight, the nearest light pollution is 30km away in Bellingham village. On a clear night in London you might see 200 objects in the sky; here it could be 7,000. It's not a blanket of stars, but a four-season, 16 tog, double-down duvet.

“Kielder is a Mag 6 sky,” explains Gary Fildes, amateur astronomer and the driving force behind the observatory. “The darkest on Earth is in the Atacama Desert - that's Mag 6.5. People think you have to travel abroad to see a great night sky.”

Fildes's enthusiasm is infectious. As we retreat to the car waiting for the clouds to lift, he whets my appetite further. We should also see Markarian's Chain, a string of galaxies 60 to 300 million light years away, Saturn's rings and M97, a swelling star with blue green blobs like an owl's eyes.

At a recent Star Camp - Kielder's twice-yearly beano for amateur astronomers - participants observed a deep space quasar galaxy. “They looked right back in time,” says Fildes, who, like most builders, can make mind-boggling statistics seem perfectly reasonable. “That was just 600,000 light years on from the formation of the Universe. Its light has been travelling towards us for 13 billion years at 186,000 miles a second.”

My head is spinning more than the Earth on its axis. But if things are spectacular high above, they're also impressive at ground level. Rising out of Black Fell's slope, with two box-like telescope turrets linked by a walkway, the observatory leaves you feeling as if you are enveloped by sky on the deck of a ship.

This is more than simply an observatory, however. It's also the latest exhibit in Kielder Water & Forest Park's Art and Architecture display. Littered around the lake and trees, the exhibits reflect their creators' unique take on the landscape, the antithesis of most stuffy art galleries.

I sat inside James Turrell's Sky space - watching more damn clouds - got hopelessly lost in a cool stone and glass maze resembling a Scandinavian Design Hotel, and entered a shiny steel alien's head where vision was reduced to a sliver of sky, land and water.

Back at Black Fell the stars continued to suffer stage fright. Fildes was now wielding a laser gun with a pulsating green beam like Darth Vader's light sabre (I defy you not to want one for Christmas). Sadly, all he could point to were raindrops. I should have guessed. The Atacama Desert gets 353 clear nights a year; Kielder has about 52.

But wouldn't you know it. Just minutes after leaving, driving back to my cabin, the clouds shattered. By the time I had downed a warming Scotch, the black canvas of sky was splattered with tantalising light. I guess a true star knows it's all about timing - and always leaves them wanting more.

NEED TO KNOW

Kielder Observatory's launch weekend and future events: 01434 220616; www.kielder-observatory.org/launch. Weekend tours are free, but night viewing costs £5pp.

National Express East Coast (08457 225225; www.national expresseastcoast.com) has return fares from London King's Cross to Newcastle from £23 standard.

Four-person cabins at Kielder's Leaplish Waterside Park (01434 250294; www.nwl.co.uk) cost from £296 for three-night weekends.

See www.enjoyengland.com/ruralescapes