Music To Create Homecoming Legacy In Aberdeenshire
A renowned musician has written an iconic composition which will be the basis for a lasting Homecoming legacy in the North-East.
Fiddler Paul Anderson was commisioned by Aberdeenshire Council to compose a piece of music and created Land Of Standing Stones to celebrate Homecoming Scotland... continues...
What can I say, easy access, beautifully restored site. What a setting,you can see for miles,when I was there you could see Dark Lochnagar.What more could you want.
High up on a raise and viciously quarried right up the edge, this lovely place seems to teeter like a potential suicide at Beachy Head.
It has been recently restored and now boasts roadsigns, a car park, some picnic tables and a well constructed, unobstrusive path suitable for wheelchairs. Historic Scotland wants this one on the map! And why not? I just wish they'd do more like this and show that people really do care for our ancient monuments instead of them being an embarrassment, like Old Keig. The views are spectacular from the little platform and the sky seems very big.
I'm not saying that it's good that the quarry has eaten into and messed up this site, but it didn't seem it was as bad as I had expected. Maybe I had just set myself up for the worst, in order to feel good. But it was yet another ancient site that was fascinatingly different to the others. After King Arthur's Round Table all chopped up by roads, Mayburgh aloofly overlooking the aforementioned site, Long Meg and her Daughters showing what big site looks like, and The Cairns of Clava complex in a sexy woodland glade, this is on the top of a hill with fantastic (if rain soddened) views all around.
Aubrey Burl in his 1995 book, 'A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany' calls the circle 'a wreck', and says that Tomenaverie means 'the hill of worship'.
PS - Some sort of restoration project was still going on.......i.e over a year since the fieldnote below......
Heading north 6 miles out of Aboyne brings you to this site - turn L into a parking area beside the stones. There's a quarry behind the stones which has encroached very near the circle itself - there was info about a restoration project at the site, so perhaps the balance will be addressed! Most of the uprights are toppled (and some disappeared into the quarry), leaving an impressive recumbent and her flankers, nicely bracketing Benachie in the distance. This is a difficult site to get a "feel" for with the desolation/destruction around, but it's got a lot to offer if you take the time to absorb what's around you...