As I sat on top of Barpa Langass wondering just what was the probability of it collapsing, after standing for countless millenia, onto poor old me, I was treated to the magnificent sight of a Hen harrier as it cruised low and silent over the moor, like a Great White Shark of the air, searching for it’s unsuspecting prey.
Ah, wonderful!!
Not very much left to see of this Dun, but some great views out to sea.
The archaeological monuments at Allt Chrysall (Allt Easdale), Bentangaval, were discovered in 1990 during the archaeological survey which preceded the building of the Vatersay causeway and its approach road. Excavations have revealed at least six phases of human occupation of this ‘preferred site’ overlooking the sound of Vatersay, beginning about 4500 years ago.
source: A Short Visitors Guide To Allt Chrysal, Barra.
Visited 2nd August 2004: Cliacabhaigh is on the grass verge to the east of the lane, usually obscured by farm machinery. I understand that this is not private land, but the local crofter is not at all keen on visitors.
When I visited I found the stone had been vandalised with yellow paint. Hand prints on the south size indicated that children had been involved. Unfortunately the farm machinery that has accumulated around the stone means that it would be easy to paint the stone without being seen from the lane. Having said that, the nearest croft is relatively nearby, and overlooks the stone.
Lining up the stone with the main Calanais site is interesting. There is certainly a relatively straight route between the two, marked by the modern lane. The only advantage of the yellow paint is that you can now just about make out Cliacabhaigh from the main site.
Shap scared me today! A beautiful spring day, sun shining and just a little mist on the hills, should have made for perfect trip but the downright weirdy nature of this place had me slightly disturbed....
It’s easy to find, on the A6 from Kendal into Shap, the stones are on the right hand side of the road, lying alongside the railway line. There is a parking place just as you enter the village and then it’s a 10 minute walk back to the site, lovely if the road isn’t too busy. On the way, you pass a lovely stream with an odd little woodland....as I was marvelling at the beauty of it all, I noticed a tree with dead animals hanging from it – told you this place was weird. I counted 2 rats and a rabbit before I was too freaked out and walked on by. I saw a number of stones along this stretch which must’ve made up the avenue, 2 which seem to have been made into a gate at some point....it was all very strange – the place seemed to be desolate and abandoned.
The Kemp Howe stones themselves are beauties and as I sat on one of the centre ones, with my back to the rumbling quarry, looking out towards Wet Sleddle and the South Cumbrian hills I could almost forget the horrors of what had befallen this site. Cars whizzed by, a few people looking over and obviously wondering what the woman in the pink top was doing sitting on a stone next to the railway line.......
What an idyllic site.
Sitting here by the stones on a tree stump in a sheltered suntrap with a babbling brook for company, I definitely felt an ode coming on.
Sadly, I’d left my pen and paper in the car so it’s lost forever.
Three-quarters of a four-poster with stones up to 1.5m.
Access. There are various footpaths and tracks to the N which may lead to the circle. I decided to take the direct route by parking at NJ683155 where the stones can be seen and going in by the stream.
There is an unclimbable deer fence along the edge of the field so my way in was by the bridge using what can only be described as a “dreep”.
Happily, it was much easier getting out.
Visited 16 March 2005
“Walkers to Stone Circle welcome”
Now there’s a sign you don’t often see on fieldgates but that’s what it says at this site.
This lovely six-stone circle has been restored by the local society.
Access Park at the parking area for the hill monument thing (NJ883307) and walk east to the access track prior to South Ythsie farm.
Visited 19 March 2005
The seven stones here form an oval with an outlier but Thom interpreted them as the remains of two concentric circles plus an outlier.
Burl says it “may” have been an RSC with ring cairn now lacking its recumbent.
Either way it’s definitely one to see.
Visited 15 March 2005
An accessible but questionable site.
The stones, in their embanked platform, stand at the four cardinal points. Each has a metal ring embedded in it which, in 1900, held guy ropes to support a flagstaff. It has the air of a reconstructed site about it.
Access. You can park outside it and access to it from the road is along a roped off path which separates you from the horses which now occupy the field.
Visited 14 March 2005
Visited 31/3/05. The long lump in the field is actually a very long long barrow, maybe a barrow of two parts, but long none the less. It is aligned with the (no longer visible) end of the Dorset Cursus. Towards the narrow corner of the field is another, ploughed down, long barrow that looks a bit like a tumulus. This too points at the cursus end-point, as does the barrow on the hillside to the south (in the neighbouring field).
I approached from the car park on the far eastern side of Martin Down nature reserve. Take the lane west from the centre of Martin village, and you eventually reach the car park. Head due west along a track and soon you will see what looks like the biggest long barrow you’ve ever seen on the NW horizon. It is, of course, nothing so ancient: its the ‘backstop’ of a rifle range in use during the second world war. However, head for it and climb to the top and you’ll have a splendid view in all directions: in particular of the long barrows that point to the absent cursus end earthworks and then southwest across the undulating chalklands where the cursus once ran.
The massive modern earthwork is only a short distance south-east of the Martin Down car park thats just off the A354 (a safe place to park on this busy road). Theres also a Bronze Age enclosure on this part of Martin Down. Its a busy busy place, and could withstand many visits. I haven’t even begun on the barrow cemetaries further down the cursus.
It’s a canny old stone this is. It has a strange expression on it’s face. It looks like it’s gracefully drifting across the moor, with a pre-occupied, ‘I can’t stop now, sorry’ sort of vibe.
Having said that, I thought it would be bigger too. Preconditioned by Thunder Stones further down Cumbria I guess.
I was also a bit interested in the other stones poking just up through the turf in the immediate vicinity. You can nearly convince yourself there’s a circle in there if you try. A circle with a shallow pit in the centre, even. Methinks Stubob’s comments are correct, if this was a cairn circle, the kerb is still traceable, and someone’s had a go at the middle.
The path is quite good from the SW, I’d say if you were looking to visit Moor Divock sites, start at this end, not at Pooley Bridge. There were a few cars parked where the road runs out of fence and hedge.
Make sure you’ve suspension if you’re on a bike though, it’s darn bumpy on the behind without it. More than 5 gears wouldn’t go amiss either.
Situated on the left, on the machair, traveling north on the A888, just past the signed turning to Borgh.
A small black (dis)coloured stone about 3ft high. There is a larger fallen stone several feet away lying on its side. This one is a lighter colour and seems about 7ft.
The sheep must use both stones for scratching as all the plants and grasses around both stones are worn away. Surrounding them both with a ring of the brilliant white Barra sand.
Near to them runs a track through the machair to a field of the dead on the promontory by the ocean. There there are two other stones that are used as boundary markers for the track. Don’t know if they are associated with this group though.
I turned off the A888 signposted for the Black Shieling/Dubharaidh and followed the road to the farmsteads and continued along the track in the direction to where MUS(eum)was indicated on the Landranger map. Although the track looked pretty rough I was in a cheap-battered-scratched-island-hire-car so thought ... well .... nothing ventured etc’ ..... surely it can’t be that bad ?? afterall, it IS the track to a museum. BIG BIG MISTAKE. I thought, ‘it can’t get any worse.’ IT DID. Definately only a track for Landrovers or JCBs.
Never got to visit either cairn as I decided retreat was the better form of valour. Worse scenario being a puncture, then missing my return flight to Glasgow.
I’ll look for Greywethers track next time, although I can’t find it on any map.
My bumpy journey back to the main (?) road was
mocked all the way by a raven tumbling and diving. CROKK! CROKK!
The same height as the nearby Langstane o’ Craigearn (3.4m), this one is more imposing but suffers from being surrounded by trees.
Access. On the map this looks like it sits in a clear area between two lines of plantation. It doesn’t. That clear area has been planted with trees now over 2m high. The stone itself sits in a clearing. Park at NJ712132, up the track NE then over two fences. I’d recommend having a GPS as there are no landmarks to follow.
Visited 16 March 2005
Easy enough to find – ask at the Saline Golf Club – “See the trees up there? There’s a dyke under them, follow it right then left, stone’s at the end.” They apparently get a few people a year asking about it.
I wonder if they felt as depressed as I did when I got there. Great situation, if it hadn’t been misty the views would have been stupendous. But what a way to treat a stone...
It’s the first one I’ve ever seen with its very own corrugated shed extension. Trust me, the pictures don’t show the full horror. It’s also wrapped up in barbed wire, presumably to stop an escape if it was so inclined.
The area’s known as Temple, but no known Hospitaller or Templar connections as far as I’m aware, so it probably refers to ‘druidical remains’. The stone is pretty big, but there are a couple of lumps of stone nearby which look suspiciously as if they might have been companions at one time or another. One of them’s built into the dyke now, and looks happier than its big pal...
Around noon, even in mid-March, is not a good time to visit a cup and ring-marked rock. But here the carvings are so strong that they still show up well in the mid-day sun.
This boulder is only a short distance from the RSC at Rothiemay which also carries cup and ring marks.
The views are not good; forestry on two sides one of them obscuring a view of Knock Hill to the N.
Access. Easy. Parking at NJ537468 then through two gates.
Visited 17 March 2005
I’ve not mentioned hills much in these posts because it would become a bit repetitive (and they’re all in the book anyway) but this one is possibly worthy of mention in that it is (I think) the only RSC where any of the major significant hills (Tap O’Noth in this case) is the hill which would be seen over the recumbent from the centre of the circle. The conical Knock Hill is also visible – 10km to the N.
The saddle-backed recumbent and two fallen stones are all that survive here.
There are markings on the recumbent which mark the line of the major southern moonset but they looked a bit glacial to me.
Access. Quite easy. Park at the houses at the railway bridge then through one gate and up a short steepish hill.
Visited 17 march 2005
I was sort of compelled to visit, how could I not, given the name connection?
It was late, but there was still enough midsummer sun to make out the parts where the slope is eroding, showing some fairly clear differentiation of soil layers inside the mound. Given that there are so many natural low mounds in the area, it would take a brave archaeologist to openly claim this to be definitely artificial, but what with the name, the strange erosion and the stones in the stream, It’s a likely candidate. It also seemed rather too circular to be a chance deposition of random soil, and it’s within spitting distance of Maes Howe, if that lends any credibility.
Of course, I want it to be an artificial mound, ‘cos it’s where the Hobs or Orkney would live. Though I hear they call themselves Hogboons these days.
This is quite visible from the path from The Cop stone to The Cockpit, a couple are silhouetted on the ridge to the NE of the path. But I’d hate to try and find it in bracken season.
It’s the kind of thing that, without prior awareness, and if it were elsewhere, you’d probably look at and dismiss any thoughts of prehistoric significance as the product of your imagination, or at best, the remains of a field boundary. The stones are low and the gaps are wide, not like the Dartmoor jobbies.
But in this landscape, it’s much easier to imagine it as a remnant of a much wider plan, relating somehow to the other bits and bobs in the area.
“The stones of this circle ... are so inconspicuous that most persons would walk past them unheeding.”
So said Fred Coles in 1900 so it’s hardly surprising that we have difficulty recognising it today!
I don’t think I was any more successful than Merrick or Moth. I’ve posted a couple of pics of what there was to see.
They seem to match Merrick’s description and presumably what Moth saw but it is difficult to make much sense of what’s there.
From Coles’ 1900 description (if you ignore his dimensions which he seems to have a problem with), this could well be an RSC.
He describes three almost concentric circles which are probably the inner and outer faces of the ring cairn and the outer circle of stones. It seems to bear a strong resemblance to nearby Auchquhorthies.
Not a mystery, just a mess.
Visited 14 March 2005
The kist is within the east Aller Brook settlement .It is between 2 leats which run north-south through the settlement.It is around 300 metres north of the B3357 east of Combstone Tor.
Agreed Moth, this one should be better known (or, at least, documented) given its surviving condition and accessibility.
Open views on the recumbent side; in addition to the recumbent and flankers, three other stones remain standing. Not bad for a forestry site.
Being a Kincardineshire RSC, it is orientated towards the SE quadrant – 168 degrees.
Visited 14 March 2005
Sites affect you differently.
More than halfway through the trip, I’d seen a few RSCs by now but this one really stopped me in my tracks.
Maybe it’s the size and the way it leans towards you, beckoning you to come closer. Maybe its the fact that there are no circle stones so these three stones get your full attention.
Standing on its own with no distracting trees or fences (or ponies!) certainly helps.
This is the site that no advance reading had prepared me for. Minimalistic .... but then I like that.
3.9m long recumbent; flankers 2.5m and 2.8m. It’s also one of many sites where the most interesting or best dressed side of the recumbent stone is on the outside. To be seen by the moon not the participants.
Visited 18 March 2005
Second visit here. The first time (1999) the visit was rather curtailed due to the attention of the cattle which appear in some of the images.
It’s such a wonderful site that I had to come back and this time I had the place to myself.
Access. . I agree with pebblesfromheaven about driving up to the site – although I can see that some might. But it is possible to drive to NJ864128 and park beside the cottages.
Visited 18 March 2005
On the 25th of March we visited the Acharn Stone circle again. It was so mild, the sun was shining, it was so peacefull and we even managed to do some soundrecording while beeing there. The birdsong was so scottish with redshanks, peewits and other moorland birds.
We could have spent the whole day there.
Inchadney
P.s: If you want to listen to a wee bit of the recording we made, follow this link:
inchadney.com/sounds.html
