Latest Fieldnotes

This is an isolated rock best found using a GPS SE 11417 46040. It is conical and has marks on all the three sides. Sorry I forgot the measuring stick and compass :-(

This is an isolated boulder best found with a GPS SE 11330 46111
PRAWR has it as “possibly natural” but I like it, so I marked and photographed it.

This is an isolated boulder best found with a GPS SE 11007 46451

This is an isolated boulder best found with a GPS SE 10767 46492

This is an isolated boulder best found using a GPS SE 10572 46336

241 SE 10527 46616

This is an isolated boulder, best found with a GPS. PRAWR has this as doubtful, but it looks OK to me.

This is an isolated rock best found with a GPS SE 10474 46635 surveyed by English Heritage to 1 m

I was up at this fella today. I got to it via the Rudland Rigg bridleway. There is no easy way to reach the cairn. The simplest way to do it is probably to use a gps. Alternatively you can do what I did and walk along the bridleway until you reach the fields marked on the map at about SE654945 and then strike out due east through the surreal bell pit moonscape of the rigg.
The cairn is very overgrown with heather and bilberries and the structure is difficult to see through the tumbled down cairn.
The cairn is fairly obviously a ring cairn with possible internal and external kerbs. There has been some structure built into one side of the cairn, probably a grouse butt, but this has long since tumbled down. There is one stone in this structure that has a very suspicious cup-like impression upon it but there are also a number of stones in the cairn that contain ‘natural cups’. The main beauty of Obtrusch is its location on the rigg edge overlooking Farndale and the valleys of the River Dove and it’s tributary the West Gill Beck.
The cairn looks north towards Horn Ridge with it’s cross ridge dyke and cairn on the very tip above Horn End Crag. In the background running north to south is Blakey ridge an ancient trackway.
Obtrusch is a good walk over some difficult ground, but if you like beaten-up ring cairns with beautiful views then this is one for you.
Oh yeh – I forgot to put my memory card in my camera so I’m afraid there’s no pictures – next time.

Spotted this fella on a high point of Glaisdale rigg.
Someone had left a golf ball covering a natural ‘cup’. Who am I to remove it?

SE 10377 47027, SE 10377 47027, SE 10380 47027, SE 10382 47027.

These are a row of stones at the top of Panorama Woods/Rocks, about 10 yards north of Panorama Drive. I am sure that I have identified 232 and 233 from PRAWR but 231 and 230 are in the correct position, but I have failed to match rock shape and depressions to PRAWR.

Provisional notes

I noticed this stone as I was driving north from Glaisdale Rigg. I saw it from the road and thought that it may have been an old gatepost, a boundary stone or at best a moorland cross.
I’d never noticed this stone before nor can I remember ever reading anything about it but a stone of this size, over 2 metres, can’t have gone un-noticed and unrecorded.
There is a second stone 50 metres to the north.

This lovely knocked about barrow is a prominent horizon marker for this part of the moors.
It is approximately 34 metres in diameter and 3 metres high. There are possible traces of a kerb and ditch on the eastern quadrant.
Access to the barrow is via the steep and uneven path from the Egton road.
Look out for the lovely millstone/boundary stone on the path.

This is an example of a fairly typical moorland barrow. It is about 36 metres in diameter and is about 2 metres high.
It is one of a number of barrows and monuments that lays beside the route of the 40 mile Lyke Wake Walk running from Osmotherly to Ravenscar. To me this implies that this route is probably an an extremely ancient trackway.

Summer is usually not the best time to visit many of our North York Moors monuments, the heavy growth of heathers and bracken render many of our monuments all but invisible. This is not the case for the Blue Man I’ the Moss, summer is definitely the time to visit this lovely fella. The stone is situated in the middle of White Moor which is essentially one huge peat bog that stretches from Egton High Moor and Murk Mire Moor in the north to the Cropton forest in the south. A walk to the Blue Man usually means one thing – getting wet. The bogs up here are more or less continuous and will suck the boots from your feet.
Walking across the moor when it is dry is quite a strange experience. The peat is extremely spongey, and moves as you step on it, you know that the water table is lurking a few inches beneath the peat and it feels as if the peaty crust could give way at any time plunging you into the boggy mire beneath.
The Blue Man is a lovely stone and quite easy to find as he sits beside a well made path which is used for the Lyke Wake Walk.
There are two ways to get to the stone, either from the Wheeldale road or the Egton Bridge road. I would recommend the Egton road as it’s lined with Foxgloves at this time of year. The stone is about a mile along the path to the east.
To the north east of the stone is the large barrow Wheeldale Howe.
All in all the Blue Man is well worth a visit but if you go after a period of wet weather or late in year be prepared for a soaking.

An oval mound approximately 80 feet by 60 feet by 3 feet. The edge rises abruptly from a “platform” path round the mound. Probably a tree circle, but may be a tumulus.

[Source: ArchSerch]

Not much to add to Rhiannon’s post, except that the stream is the small River Boyd, the barrow sits on an elevated rise above the river; note the presence of the church further to the east, and there is of course the old roman road (via Julia probably) that goes through Bitton. Could also be pre-existing prehistoric trackway which I am sure it was. Lynchets on the Golden valley side and of course the odd stone marked on 19th c maps following the line of the Boyd, not to forget that the occupant of the barrow must have decreed in his last will and testament, bury me down by the river with that hill (Kelston) in sight.

With the nice additions to this site by Greywether, Fitzcoraldo and Hob (!), it seems that no panel will escape the sharp eye! As a modest step to completeness, I added two pics taken in 2002, of panel 5a. Who’s going for number 6?

I first came to this site in 1985 when it was little more than a tent sheltering an excavation team. It was fascinating literaly seeing another World, that had been buried for thousands of years, unearthed before your eyes. Twenty years later I revisit Flag Fen to find an established visitor centre built to preserve these Bronze Age findings and to challenge our understanding of this, and other, Bronze Age societies. Flag Fen is perhaps more exciting to visit now as more is known about the place and this, in turn, excites as you can only wonder at what is yet to be discovered.

Visually Flag Fen is not the most eye-tingling place to visit and yet you sense that this is perhaps a very important historical site and ancient place of pilgrimage. Because the remains of this allignment are made of wood they must be difficult to excavate and even harder to preserve once excavated. In a way this gives the place more of a living history feel and all the more exciting.

The surrounding area, complete with an excavated section of Roman Road built on top of the Bronze Age allignment, recreates a Bronze Age settlement with huts and sheep from breeds farmed thousands of years ago. As much as this only recreates what we understand to have beeen around in antiquity Flag Fen is all the better for educating about the Bronze Age and for paying homage.

A display shows what Flag Fen intend for the future with more excavations planned. I look forward to revisiting it in another 20 years.

The east stone of “The Pass of the Two Stones” has a good number of ankle-high stones radiating outwards some distance to the east, in a dip. These are earthfast, and not here by coincidence.

Frances Lynch in her guidebook to the ancient sites of the area, likens the small stones’ to that of Bryn Cader Faner.

I counted fourteen small stones here. There are likely more under the grass.

The east menhir can be seen to the rear, as can the west menhir, with one of its other associated stones.

Frances Lynch also says the western stone has a further two associated stones.

This stone is within the double security fence at Oldbury PS.

It seems to be opposite Windon BS.

It may be a Standing Stone, Mile Post or Rocky Outcrop whos knows. Anyway it must truly annoy the guy who cuts the grass ;-)

BNFL claim it’s a rocky outcrop, which it may be.

A Clava ring cairn which was, at one time, hollowed out to make a pond, now dry.

Very overgrown in summer and even a lengthy performance of the trampling-down dance could reveal only a short stretch of kerb on the SW. Three circle stones could be seen – there are supposed to be more. One of the two cup-marked stones was found.

Amongst trees on the road W of Kiltarlity.

8.6.05

Nice kerb cairn with large closely set stones looking better than it did when I last saw it 10 years ago. Then it was only about one quarter visible due to untamed vegetation. Now, thanks probably to further building development in the area, it sits in clear open ground.

The site is not in its original location but was moved when the Kessock Bridge approach road was built.

It was once thought to be a Clava ring cairn, largely on account of the grading of stones towards the SW. However excavation prior to its relocation revealed no inner kerb.

Behind the Community Centre, Ashton Road in the Raigmore Estate, Inverness.

7.6.05

This Clava passage grave has a well-preserved kerb on the S and W sides but not a great deal surviving elsewhere. The passage entrance is marked by two kerbstones set radially to the others. Two broken circle stones remain.

The site is in the croft of Balnagrantach, off the A833. There is room to park off the road just before the gate to the croft. Two gates to the site, neither locked.

8.6.05

Not too much here worth bothering about. Most of the stones are field clearance and only historical evidence can classify it as a Clava cairn.

Visible from the A96.

7.6.05

A Clava passage grave with a fair bit of outer kerb still visible but not much evidence of the passage and chamber. One surviving but broken circle stone.

Through an unlocked gate and up a slight hill.

7.6.05