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Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech
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Visited 4th November 2002: I pursuaded Louise that this was a minor detour on our way back home from Edinburgh. In practise the roads were a lot slower than we expected, and we nearly ran out of light before we got there. Fortunately the chamber is aligned (approximately) to the south west, with beautiful views across the Dore Valley and towards the setting sun. The evening light contrasted dramatically between vivid sunshine and deep shadow.
The capstone is enormous (none of the photos here do it justice), and even though it's now broken into two pieces, I was in awe of it. I tried to find the cup marks that are supposed to be on the outlying stone*, but all I found was a relatively modern carving of a star (see photo).
This was Alfie's first visit to a prehistoric site, but we got no reaction out of him (other than the usual 'give me milk mummy!'). William was very pleased with the burial chamber, and decided to pretend it was a shop. Well worth the extra miles!
As an aside, access for wheelchair users and people with pushchairs is unnecessarily hampered by a narrow gateway in the perimetre fence. This is all the more annoying because the site is so close to the road. Visitors with limited mobility on foot will probably have relatively little difficulty getting in through the gap.
* [I figured out later on that the cupmarked stone is not part of this site, but a seperate stone]
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Posted by Kammer
6th November 2002ce
Edited 22nd December 2003ce
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