Despite what the map showed I still had hopes that the alignment continued to the Old Finstown Road. Above the road junction that goes across to Hatston Brae, where a mirror on the verge is used for safer exiting, a small series of houses heads over the same way with a farmtrack I dimly remembered came out somewhere and I thought stones. With recent weather the track once past the last cottage proved rather muddy. At one point I had to edge past a big old roller. Turned out this way only went as far as the wide farmtrack that heads up Wideford Hill. So off across the fields I went. These were even more muddy, churned up by animals so that no bits were truly dry and I just tried to avoid the very worst of it. Got as far as the end of the wall from the stone pair but could not pass further and so had to retreat. I followed the continuation of the wall line along a field back to the broad track. This drystane wall only survives to a few courses, mostly obscured by turf at that. Then into the field the other side of this, the beginning a 'quagmire' I mired my shoes in. Partway along this field there is a fallen stone a few feet long at one point on the turf over the scant wall remains.
Once I could see the place I had previously identified with the well I headed for that. Reaching it I found a big hollow, fairly level with a few humps though. Looking up the way I saw more features across the dyke which I thought I might as well investigate as I couldn't get any more filthy ;-) This field was waterlogged over several stretches that ran down to the dyke. There were a couple of nice drystane bridges across the dyke, an unusual number of such fair construction in a short length of water it seems to me. Then I went back to the deep hollow into which the dyke proceeds. I'm not sure how natural it is. Along the field edge I was looking down from a straight bit of wall, perhaps a man's height, that makes one edge of the hollow. Looking across to the other side is a vee (of ?collapsed material) at the bottom of which is a structure resembling Biddy's Well. On that side I see part of a drystane wall in RH side of its vertical edge, and presume that the structure is part of a larger wall now 'hidden'. A line heads towards the entrance and the remains of a metal bucket lie in it.
The bucket obviously had been used to draw water from the well. Only problem being a large-scale map shows the well the other side of the dyke from where I had been, about halfway up that field and several meters back from the field-edge. So this puts it at HY4215511507, whereas my feature is at HY4228111433 (now in someone's back garden, else I'd have had a gander inside it). One's thought naturally says it must be a culvert running beneath a wall then. Except that there is no 'back' to it, just sitting there at the back of this landscape(?d) 'ampitheatre'implies some level of importance. {a little digging in the Orkney Archive raises the possibility that Blackhill is actually 'bleaching hill', which would suit fine}
I had some passing thought of the standing stone pair being at the centre of an equal-armed cross. Despite which I was still surprised when my surmise proved correct. Up the hill to the end of cultivated land at 4172711612 then down to the Sunnybank Road on 4290811215, over to the broad farmtrack at 4220111018 and the other end above the reservoir 4248611814 (this later aligning to the Saverock cists over at HY427126). The broad farmtrack (which I would love to be an ancient 'death road'! ) begins at 4287210788, for the Sunnybank Road takes an unexplained turn thereafter, and ends at 4150511252 where the road comes up from Wideford Farm. This latter road is exceptionally steep - the farmtrack I suspect is the easiest passage to the top of Wideford Hill (just below the summit actually, the brow over which the chambered cairn lies). Maybe it went a little further, the military road confuses matters.
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Posted by wideford
16th February 2005ce
Edited 1st March 2005ce
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