Latest Fieldnotes

My partner and I visited this site in summer 1993 – this was the first stone circle we both had been to.
We thought there might be ettiquette at these places – like hushed reverence or something – when we got there, there was an older couple lying down, snogging on the grass at the side of the circle. We looked about for a wee while then went back to the car and had our breakfast. We went back and the couple were away and we clambered about the stones, posing and taking photographs (I’ll try and upload them soon – I like these photos cos I’ve got a full head of hair and a couple of buttocks less fat). We stayed there all morning – it was a fresh bright morning – I’ll never forget the impression this place left on me.
We left and visited Culloden battlefield, later the same day (there was a mournful and haunting atmosphere here). The place was almost lost in a thick pea soup fog – couldn’t have been more different from East Aquhorthies.

After 6 hours of driving we finally approached Avebury, it was early evening and the road was heavy with traffic, both Mrs Fitz and myself were feeling a little jaded.
FUCKIN’ HELL! The Swindon Stone! It just leapt out of the twilight, BANG.... re-energised ...here we go!
All excited we parked up at the pub (rooms pre-booked 2 nights), got our stuff up to the room (The Keiler Room no less), looked out of the window, BANG... The Cove staring back at me..what a view. We yomped out into the dark and started greeting the stoney chaps. Talk about a rush!
The next morning up early full breakfast back to the chaps, for a brief stroll. Mrs Fitz is no great megalithomaniac so she humours me and I don’t push it. Off we go to Devizes (Mrs Fitz checks the market and I mooch around the lovely museum) after this comes Stonehenge (ruined by the almost unavoidable heritage industry, but what can you do? you gotta keep the numpties from wrecking the place, I just find it all very sad, a bit like a trip to the zoo..no joy) ) Marlborough (not impressed), West Kennett (very impressed) and Silbury..Yow!( these are discussed elesewhere).
Back in Avebury. The place has had a dusting of snow and is lovely and frosted. Mrs Fitz chills and I set off with Burl’s Pocket Guide to show me the way. What a place, hardly anyone there, it is just so fuckin organic, stones and village together weaving in and out of each other. The village has prevented the circle becoming another site in a cage (stonehenge).
Following Burl’s root I traipse round the stoney chaps, stopping to chat here and there and just picking up the energy vibe until i reach a point in the SE sector when I feel like..DING .. fully charged. I then hit the West Kennett Avenue. I almost flew down the thing, I was buzzing so much, chatting like a monkey to the stoney chaps and just off in a world of my own, feeling like a lord’s bastard...pure bliss mateys.

Last year , I saw these cup and ring marks mentioned in the new landranger map (it wasn’t there in any older maps I had ever seen).
I became obsessed (see miscellaneous) and visited the site in October 2000, starting my walk from the village of Plean.
There are a few rocky outcrops in the area, some of which are heavily overgrown with gorse, and an old quarry.
I found some very weathered cup markings and a cup and ring mark on the edge of one of the outcrops and another group of markings in the middle of the same outcrop. It was getting dark and I walked to the village of Cowie and got the bus home. I hadn’t eaten all day and I was exhausted
This summer I avoided the site because of the foot and mouth threat.
I intend to go back to this place to take photos and spend more time looking about.

Visited October 2001. This souterrain was discovered in 1859 when ” Mr Lindsay of West Grange of Conon lifted a large stone in one of his fields and revealed a curious bee-hive chamber.” It made the Dundee telegraph of 4th June 1859. A Mr Jervise made some limited excavations and drew a plan. There is a main passage of 54 feet long, the beehive chamber connects to it about 1/3 down the tunnel..and there is even a short side tunnel off this connection. 20 feet north of the tunnel was a large paved area and some 10 to 40 feet to the NW some six burial sites were found. Finds at the site included humanbones, coloured pebbles, coarse pots, pieces of Roman amphora, a bronze armlet, grind stones, perforated pieces of lead and some corroded iron implements. ( now in the national museum). Subsequent visitors were damaging the structure and the passages were filled in..but it was said to be possible to still enter the beehive chamber in 1951and enter 17 feet of tunnel.

When I visited -it was to see if there was anything left, I had no intention of entering. It is as marked on the OS map and very easy to find. The beehive chamber has had the slab put back on it and the chamber appears to be still open beneath. 20ft to the NW there is also another pile of stone, presumably covering the main tunnel.

This site is very likely to be in a good state of preservation..eventhough/ as a result of the original builders backfilling it. It is unique in NE scotland terms for a) the beehive chamber b) th proto- pict burials( if that is what they are and c) the large paved area.

It has a typical and wonderful location...gently rolling slope down to the Tay estuary..and on a good day a fantastic view to sea and way far south. The prospect of talking to the farmer and lifting off the capstone is amazing; but you would need a few folks to do it and this site is really a gem which as it is -is preserved but inaccessible. Lets hope it stays preserved in some form or other.

Woody.

PS I will try to post some picture in due course.

I didn’t know these stones existed until about 3 years ago, when I saw them marked on a victorian map. It took me to find out where exactly they were and then when I found them I was uplifted – these stones are less than a mile from my home.
I pass them several times a week now so it’s hard to write about them.
The stones are about 50m apart, sitting on the grass lawn at the front of the Central Scotland Police HQ where they train the alsations. (although naked shamanism is not advised, the site is fully accessible).
Despite being in the middle of the office zone of Stirling, with a main road closeby, there is still an air of peace here.
The stones are sat on a large raised flat shelf area, close to the raised ice age beach, above the Carse of Stirling. When the stones were erected, it is likely that the Carse was boggy, with the stones sat above and to the SW of the Carse, on dry, prime agricultural land. There would have been important views of the crag and tail formations of the Abbey Craig to the NE (Wallace Monument), the castle rock to the N (where the castle and old part of town now sit) and also sweeping views of the Ochil Hills to the N and E.
Much of the visible horizon is now taken up with the surrounding office buildings.
Despite this, Randolphfield is still a special place.
Check out the modern tributes to this pair at the other side of the main road in the front garden of 1 Newhouse, and at the pedestrian precinct in the town centre at the bottom of King Street half a mile to the north.

Had a picnic on our tartan rug here last summer, with the family. We were camping at Kenmore and on the only day of that week that the sun came out, we made the point of coming here for lunch and to dry out among these stones.
This is a special and complex place. Many trees on the other side of the road -cant see the confluence of the 2 great rivers a few hundred yards north and down the hill. We had a great lunch there though and the place has an alive feeling.
Also worth looking for are the 2 stones,(map ref. 793 467) less than a km to the south just inside the grounds of Taymouth Castle not far from the estate road.

I visited the Ballochmyle walls last summer with my partner and our two boys.
We didn’t have much clue as to where we were going – all we had was a road atlas and the directions in the Modern Antiquarian.
This part of the Ayr valley is truly enchanted. The valley is narrow, deep and heavily wooded – these woods are ancient. The surrounding land outside and above the valley is rolling green pastureland, so when you descend into the valley you feel like this is just a different world.
Our search for the walls turned into a true quest lasting an hour and a half of me scrambling around, losing, finding and losing the family. While searching, I was down by the river – it’s deep and dark and goes slow beneath great red sandstone cliffs on either side with these little red beaches at your feet, and the green canopies high above and all around. There’s also a huge red stone Victorian viaduct which straddles the valley nearby.
What a feeling when we found the walls!
They consist of 2 vertical cliff faces with a variety of cup / ring / animal and phallic symbols carved into the soft and brittle sandstone.
The cliffs were only rediscovered less than 20 years ago, so their current exposure leaves the carvings vulnerable to erosion – before rediscovery they were covered in thick vegetation.
The carvings are unusual, in that they are on vertical, not horizontal sheets, but quirks of a wider culture are understandable down there in that valley.
Also not usual in Scotland(?) is the animal carvings – the only other possible prehistoric animal carving I’ve seen in Scotland was at Dunaad.
You could spend all day here – the surroundings were warm and serene that day but the walls had a dark red drama that took our breath away. Our gameboy / pokemon obsessed boys were held in wonder and that was great to see.
It’s a bugger to find though and I can’t shed much light on how we found it other than to take a better map than we had.

-August 2002-
Came back here with Norie of the pictures.
I dont know if it’s my imagination but the walls looked to have deteriorated a bit.
And somebody has been at the carvings with a mix of charcoal, chalk and wax crayon.
This kind of thing is bad enough on horizontal sheets of hard rock but to arse about with these walls is plain vandalism as the rock is crumbly sandstone and the rain wont get a chance to wash the crayon etc. away as these are vertical cliffs.

It still remains a very special place but I felt pretty pissed off after this visit.

Lovely place for some birthday respite. Five hours of driving on a lovely day. Hi to the pilgrim we interrupted.
lovely gnarled stones. They must have had a great old time selecting them. my kind of stones. The breeze in the trees hinting at something and not quite understood. The Kingstone leaning to catch the whispering breeze.Oh what a place. The vibe was Northern. I will return. Stones with holes, you can’t beat ‘em. A hole in a stone is a window, someone knew this, we know it too.

Hill of Drimmie (AKA Woodside)
October 1992
A bit of a collectors item this one- I had trouble distinguishing this stone circle from the ruined dry stane dyke that runs along the side of the forest, but the stones are just large enough to be separate from the wall. Burl has this place as a possible four poster, but difficult to say now that the wall runs right through the site.

Directions
From Blairgowrie and Rattray take the Drimme hill road at NO179463 north east-ish! Pass the Glenballoch stone circle and continue north, then northwest. The stone circle is in the Forestry Commission forest on the right of the road just about opposite the house on the left of the road before East Drimmie.

Glenballoch
October 1992
This stone circle is a curious one cos on the OS Pathfinder map this site is marked as two standing stones and marked in normal font, not the quaint olde antiquarian way! Burl has this site as well preserved and a four poster, but when I visited I would say it’s not one of the most obvious four posters I’ve been to. Indeed, it looks as if there is a ruined internal cairn and three large blocks of stone, but none of em are very upright. Just to the northeast of the circle there is a great standing stone (at approx NO185483) which is probably an outlier. You can make it out in the background just above the middle stone.

Directions
From Blairgowrie and Rattray take the Drimmie hill road at NO179463 north east-ish! Pass Bonnington farm on the left side of the road and continue til you get to the sawmill just down from Glenballoch cottage. The stone circle is in the field on the right just off the road.

Is this not one of the coolest places? Had such a top morning sat staring at this last summer.

Frosty morning, no one around – kind of misty too in that Cornish fashion.

Great to clamber under the top stone too and sit under it’s huge mass – thinking...

Chun Quoit offers welcome shelter (as long as you’re small enough to squeeze in!) on an otherwise exposed moor. The wind was wild when we were there but sitting inside Chun I felt really cosy and protected from the elements.

The views were spectacular despite the weather. There’s a great panoramic view of the sea which always does it for me!

After sitting outside for a while, tuning into my surroundings, I could almost visualise people from the past carrying out their rituals.

Definitely worth a visit and easily walkable from Morvah (where we got a reasonably priced cab to from St Ives).

The valley of the two stones – don’t know how you say electricity pylons in Welsh! But somehow, if you make your way up here at the right time they just don’t seem to matter. Winter is the best, preferably at twilight, this place just has such an atmosphere. The two huge standing stones stand on the horizon as you rise out of the valley to look down towards Anglesey (there’s the remains of a Roman Road here) – and they almost seem like gateposts, the entrance to another world. I often wonder if that was their intended effect.

This place is amazing, not just for the circle itself, but because I believe it is part of a huge ritual landscape which has not been properly documented. The area consists of the tops around Tal Y Fan, and the circumference is dotted with monuments. The various structures in the vicinity of Meini Hirion are the most well known, but there are also circles, huge megaliths and a dolmen above Rowen in Bwlch Y Ddeufaen (Valley of the two stones), and a very old church with a traditionally sacred well in the churchyard at Llanbedr y Cennin. On the tops directly above this I believe there are the remains of another massive megalithic monument, although not being an archaeologist I can’t be certain of this. This is a fascinating area which is deserving of much more archaeological interest.

My great Aunt and Uncle used to live at Old Bewick, so I used to walk the hill and moor endlessly as a kid, when the ring cairn was just a bunch of cists in the heather – a stone age cemetry, my Dad used to say. Scared the shit out of me! Bla Wearie is the proper name for this place, the area by the old shepherds house and crag. It is probably the most evocative place I’ve been to, and now with the reinstated presence of the ring cairn! My Dad carved his name in the rock when he was a kid, but I’ve never found it.
To be honest, no matter how hard I looked when I was a kid, I could never find the rock carvings on Bewick Hill. From the other posts they sound amazing, maybe it’s about time for a return visit!

visit: 5/11/2001, 1:15pm

The saddest sight ... a captive stone. The London Stone sits near it’s original site across the road from Cannon Street tube station, in the front of the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation.

Once a considerable landmark megalith, all that remains is a tastefully lit micro-wave oven sized lump. It is “preserved” behind bars and toughened glass, tamed, humiliated, ignored. Just the act of stopping to look caused passers-by to look at me curiously ... getting out my camera led to outright derision, pitying looks from the sophisticated city-set to the easily-impressed out-of-towner ...

An uninspiring, depressing experience ...

To find the circle head out along the track from the Hurlers carpark. When it forks, take the left one out towards Golddiggings Quarry. About half way along, as the track starts to bend right there seems to be a barrow/mound ? on your left. From here leave the track and head off towards the low tor towards the SW. Bearing slightly left of a line between the tor and the Cheesewring behind you you will somehow find the circle, it has a gorse bush in the middle of it..but there are several bushes!

Better still buy a map.

Sunday 4 Nov

There is a BIG sky, a flock of Golden Plover circle overhead before landing in a nearby field to roost for the night. This is my first visit to the stones, expected them to be bigger, there is no way I am going to squeeze my healthy body through there!. i take a couple more photos and head off towards Ding Dong mine. The colours are amazing today, just what I needed after a few heavy weeks of work. The view from the mine into Mount’s Bay is breathtaking, the sun catching the coast all the way down to Lizard Point. I head back, two others have now found the stones and others are on the way, I say hello and head back to the car to drive to Cape Cornwall to watch the sunset over the Scillies before heading for home contented.

Carn Brea is one of those places you never get fed up with, as a child I grew up very near there (Tuckingmill) and as a teenager I ‘courted’ there. I have fond memories of sunday afternoons, taking the walk to the monument with my younger brother. It is a place that when I can see it I know I’m back home. I was in awe of it then and still am.

Second time we’ve visited, and if anything the rain was even heavier. A fantastic megalith which the christian dickheads have done their best to conceal and subdue – no chance. It’s another site where you wonder what else was there-the small stone in the corner, aligned on the road, the circular aspect to parts of the churchyard-who knows? (Send for Time Team, I don’t think).

Another site afflicted by modern intrusions, yet still rising above them so that you don’t really notice. The scale of this site is immense, its easy to see why a fourth monolith nay have been present, indeed you wonder what else may have been there.

A spectacular site which should not be missed.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring Dartmoor having previously lived in nearby Plymouth for a few years and it really is littered with ancient sites. For me though, this is the greatest spot on the moors. Bellever Tor itself is fantastic, commanding a superb view over the south of the moor. The area to the north of the tor is forested (now partially deforested in places) on either side with a central ‘avenue’ of open land leading up to the hill. This may be a later artificial man-made intervention, but it gives the tor a real sense of majesty, like its a ceremonial pathway or something. This ‘avenue’ is approximately 1.5 km in length, leading all the way up to the ancient Kraps Ring (I ain’t shitting you!, Doh!) settlement. Walking between the tor and the settlement, there are numerous hut circles, cairn circles , stone rows and cists. The whole area really has the air of a antiquated mecca and the most happening ‘vibes’ of practically any historical site I’ve visited (and I’ve been to quite a few...). In fact I spent an amazing summers evening up here recently exploring the area and climbing the tor to witness a spectacularly red sunset.

Last time I went I stayed at the Youth Hostel which is handily located a few minutes walk away in the hamlet of Bellever. I believe there is also a hotel in nearby Postbridge (plus numerous other places in the locality), so no excuses for not hanging around to check out the other sites in the area, like the Greywethers as well.

I guess everyone has to make the ‘pilgrimage’ to the ‘henge at least once in their life if only to decide for themselves whether the stones are worth the hype or been commercialised beyond reason.

Well I guess their is an element to both arguements. Obviously it’s a well impressive site and something to be proud of but it is a pity the place has suffered so much abuse. The A303 being so close is bad enough, but the tacky gift shop and entry fee plus the headset issue to hear some cheesy misinformed commentary is taking it too far. I think the place can speak for itself. Oh and the (in)security guards patrolling the grounds is pathetic.

A top site ruined by the bad vibes of gross commercialisation.

I couldn’t visit the Hurlers without a visiting the Cheesewring as well what with it being such a short walk away. Basically a large naturally exposed rock outcrop / tor just teetering on the edge of a quarry. Bit of a climb to the top, but well worth it. Thereare some magnificent views to be had of the wilderness of the surrounding area and getting closer to the rocks just brings home what a freak of nature this formation is. Like other tors around the region, the rocks are precariously balanced on one another and it looks as if they could topple at any moment. Has all the makings of a classic rock idol and as potent as many man made temples, if not more so. A lonely, but magnificent place.

Well, this site is certainly in a very bleak and desolate location on Bodmin Moor just on the edge of the village of Minions. I couldn’t help but find it quite beautiful though. It’s certainly pretty unique as well with its three circles. The day I was there it had been raining and there was a wonderful rainbow to brighten the sky. There were quite a few visitors about but the site curiously still felt really lonely. A lonely, desolate but beautiful place.