Cultoon Stone Circle View all content for Cultoon

From the mini-circle of Adilistry yesterday to this catering size mutha today. Both the scale and the setting of this circle are utterly breathtaking. Set on the dome of a small hill with intermittent views down to the Atlantic for 180 degrees, with the strange knobbly mountain of Beinn Tart a'Mhill bearing down from the east, the sense of centrality and grandness is almost overpowering. It seems to have originally been about 15 or 20 stones, from 5 to 8 or 9 feet tall. It's 35 big paces across. Sadly, only two stones still stand (although greyweather's field notes suggest some were never erected in the first place). Oddly, of the two that remain standing, facing each other east-west, the western seems to have been one of the very smallest. While many lie fallen, some stones at the edge seem too wrongly proportioned to have been circle stones. Strangely, a kerb of smaller stones – fist size to head size – runs between all the standing stones. A hundred metres or so to the west, the main sea view, is a peculiar round barrow type mound. Though not marked as a cairn on the OS map the shape is certainly anomalous and eye-catching, and Greywether's photo caption unequivocally calls it a cairn. Far flung but well worth it. Imagining this place with all the stones up is really intense. visited 16 June 05

Posted by Merrick 24th November 2005ce

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