Yes, I know all that. People just run a mile whenever something that is different appears. The aversion seems equally true whether it is potentially a good thing (a massive stone circle, for instance) or a bad thing (like a toxic waste spill) ... And I'm not just describing one sacred landscape but two, with a strong presentiment (?) that there are similar monuments all the way between - that nobody has bothered to search for yet.

Guest article ? There is the article that I wrote for Antiquity but it is out of date and badly written. Needs a heavy editorial input! I did think about writing a short piece for Antiquity just about the Herdley Bank Long Barrow. I thought, perhaps, they could cope with just one new major find.

I've still not retrieved my revolutionary cupmarked stone, in the shape of a magic mushroom, from the Portable Antiquities Officer. I need to build my reserves up before I can stand the sadness of him, probably via a piece of paper, saying 'it's just a fossil remnant'. (I left them a magic mushroom, as well, for comparison, and I'm sure that won't have helped).

Well nobody has disputed the antiquity of these sites. The county archaeologist thought one stone row was the remains of a medieval field system, even though he found a cupandring stone among it. Then he listed the site under the wrong name. But, no, none of them are disputed, they're just ignored. It's as though there were an exclusion zone around them. I could draw the boundaries of it - the Cumbrian border from Talkin to Melmerby. Melmerby to Allenheads. Allenheads to Haltwhistle. Haltwhistle to Talkin. There are exceptions, of course, but only just one or two.