THE hoped for sunrise ceremony at Avebury to mark the summer solstice this morning turned out to be one of the lowest attended for some years thanks to late night rain that sent many of the revellers packing even before dawn and then the sunrise being hidden behind thick black cloud.

Police officers have a saying that “the weather is the best policeman” and so it turned out at Avebury because the rain that persisted through Monday evening and into the early hours deterred many of those who had turned up and they simply went back home or to their tents or to the collection of ramshackle camper-vans and converted vans parked on the Ridgeway.

Police confirmed it had been one of the quietist nights on record at Avebury in recent years with no arrests at all.

Missing from the sunrise ceremony on Tuesday morning was the Druid’s keeper of the Stones Terry Dobney from West Kennett who suffered a stroke last week although doctors did allow him out of Great Western Hospital for two hours on Monday evening and he was pushed around the Druidical sacred site and its sun circle where he has given the ritual invocation for the last eight or nine years to welcome the sunrise.

His place was taken by one of his deputies, Druid priest Gordon Rimes who lives right next door to the part of the stone circle where the sunrise ceremony always takes place.

But instead if the hundreds who have joined in other years, eagerly awaiting the first peep at the sun as its crests the east horizon, on Tuesday morning there were just a few hundreds.

On the high bank which runs around the circle where there is normally a press of people standing four or five deep there was just a single line of hopeful sun-gazers and although they sent up a loud cheer at the time the sun should have appeared they did not get so much as a glimpse of it because of the dense grey cloud.

Mr Rimes, who was previously a wicken (witch) until being elevated to priest status has attended the past 12 summer solstice celebrations at Avebury and, he said, Tuesday’s was one of the least well attended he could recall.

At four minutes past five, when on a cloudless morning the first rays of the sun should have been glimpsed from the stone circle, Mr Rimes who was joined by a number of other Druid and pagan priests and priestesses led a loud wail to greet the hidden sunrise and he called out: “Hail the rising sun, Summer Solstice 2011, hail and welcome.”

One of the revellers who did stay all night was Australian Lucy Chambers, 50, who had travelled half-way around the world to take part in the sunrise celebration and who was not at all upset that the sun failed to appear. “This is one of my favourite places on the planet and I have been here about six times before but this is my first time here for a solstice,” she said.