Me and Stu ventured up here after a visit to Yarnbury Henge. The landscape changes once you've past the henge. You are now in the mining zone and part of a desolate but not unattractive industrial wasteland. There are tips, shafts and the remains of the mine buildings everywhere.
We parked up at the top of the lane and this bloke comes up all friendly like, and asked us what we were up to. We told him that we were looking for circles, he reckon he'd been coming on the moor for 15 years and had never seen a circle. I showed him the map and he told us which way to go. He then asked us if we liked watching lapdancers. I asked him what he was doing on the moor he said that he was off to kill some rabbits and then shoot a porn film. At that point all his mates turned up in 4X4's and they drove off in convoy across the moor.
From the top of the lane you should take the right hand track and head for the chimney. Once you've crossed the dam and are heading up to the chimney you pass through a gate. Walk up the bank to about halfway between the gate and the chimney and then turn sharp left and charge across the beck on to the far bank. The two circles should be a dozen or so meters in front of you.
These are not stone circles, they are circles of stone - ring cairns with the banks composed of earth and small rocks. The most southerly of the pair is a lovely looking thing the more northerly one is a bit wrecked but recognizable.
These two monuments are in the zone between the track and the beck. To return don't bother charging back across the beck, just follow it downhill and you'll come to the gate. Check out the mineshaft capped with a rough corbelled roof. It's a lovely relatively recent example of modern practical megalithic masonry.
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Posted by fitzcoraldo
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