Yes, the old stones at Alston can be seen on the Hexham road leading out on the right, before the turn off for Kirkhaugh. I just see them off the bus. There's also a massive earthwork - pictured on this site - which is credited as Iron Age defensive but, as the bank is just an L-shape, is not very defensible. I've lived in Alston and it's a good place to be - it's where my kids grew up.

The only work with curricks I have planned for the summer is to rebuild two fallen ones that belong to the Holymire site - and then only if I'm grant aided. A week ago I would have said 50/50 possibility, now it's looking more like 70/30 against.

How long would it take to describe the difference between haymakers and liberty caps ? About seventeen years ? Do you suppose that a person that spends half of his waking life preserving things would destroy something that was created four thousand years ago ? There is a currick named Money Currick in Knarsdale. It's close by a Bronze Age hut and should be capped by a white river-worn quartz pebble. As often as I put this moon rock back it's taken off again, by the keepers. It is their heaps of stone - a couple of feet high - that are there to mark a foxhole or cache of grit - that I pull down.