Take the Banff road, the A97, from Huntly and after 1/2 mile turn of towards Brideswell. Climb the hill stopping at the top when Newtongarry Wood has been reached. If using a car there is plenty room to pull in on the north side. This is the same side as the barrow.
Walk up the middle of the sparse wood, climbing two fences until a clearing is reached. The barrow is in front being almost 52 meters in length. Its builders had an eye for scenery as this is a beautiful resting place. Turf covers the barrow now.
A further 30 meters along the hilltop there is another smaller round cairn also turf covered. Some of it has been destroyed by animals which makes a change to humans.
The key local legends here link the fourteenth-century Robert The Bruce to the area's prehistoric monuments from thousands of years earlier. Bruce was taken ill at the Battle Of Slioch against the Comyns (1307). His camp was supposed to have been on Robin's Height, to the north of Slioch, and the OSA in 1799 described the hill as having large inscribed stones and entrenchments. Whatever these earthworks and stones were, they are long gone. The prehistoric round cairn and long barrow on Newtongarry Hill to the north-east, along with a third, now vanished tumulus, were said to have been built by Bruce's men as observation and communications posts, with the sick king giving orders from the camp. In later years one of the tumuli was named the Fairy Hillock, and was also supposed to have been a place of execution.
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Posted by drewbhoy
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