Re: Down In The Doldrums | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

Slaggyford Stones 1

Image by StoneGloves

Slaggyford Stones .

tiompan Sep 17, 2011 08:57:09

Replying to StoneGloves

StoneGloves wrote:

"It took someone using a computer to point out how impossible and illogical that was".

You can't give it up! There's a process which is now known as brainstorming, where you just chuck things out, and see if anything useful comes out. You wouldn't try it with a hostile person - just trying to score points - as that ends discussion and any creative response.

Your GoogleEarth projection is useful for some things but misleading for others. I've seen the summer sunset behind Amos Hill, so please don't tell me it's impossible.

Thom explains his theory as to what he believed this alignment, which was to a fixed star, signified to the prehistoric builders. Sadly can no longer be verified due to precession - unlike the solstice sunsets and sunrises, which can ...

Of course you can see the sun set behind Amos Hill , if you stand right next to it . But it is impossible to see it from the line of stones at Thornhope , which is where you suggested , no matter how much you brainstorm it will never be true .
You don't need GE to work that out .
Precession is easily taken into account and any suggestion can be verified if you ahve a date all it means is that like your sunset you will never be able to see it .

StoneGloves Sep 17, 2011 21:28:03

Replying to tiompan

"Of course you can see the sun set behind Amos Hill , if you stand right next to it . But it is impossible to see it from the line of stones at Thornhope , which is where you suggested , no matter how much you brainstorm it will never be true .
You don't need GE to work that out ".

I'm sure you'd be able to figure out how to get my Blackberry maps to work on the Metro system but your GoogleEarth has deficits, on a major scale. The way I would walk to my basecamp in the hills was past the stone row. That's where I left the railway line - now known as the South Tyne Trail - and started off the twelve hundred feet ascent to my camp. When you're carrying ninety pounds of baked beans and biscuits and oranges you want to be out of the heat of the afternoon. So I went up in the evening, just as the light faded.

Because the stone row is lower than the top of Amos Hill - even after its slumped a metre or so - you are looking up at it and the horizon is actually the field behind the hill, at the centre, with Black Hill rising to the left. During spring and autumn the sun, from the stone row, sets behind Black Hill. At the solstice - and a few days before and after - the stting sun moves out from the obscuring Black Hill and appears to roll down its edge. Which has a steep edge at about NY662532. I've never seen it properly, just half, in half out, on the nineteenth.

There is a fallen stone beyond the row, which I assume was an outlier, and that seems to be the best spot to watch these summer sunsets from as the view from the row itself is impeded by a stone wall and scrub trees. I was always keen to get to my campsite as swiftly as possible and rarely hung about there. I also spent a lot of times following the sunrises around the solstice, as I was in a NW/SE valley which seemed ideal to observe them.