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After a quick look at a sodden Kirkstone it’s a short drive down the road into Hartsop, the car park is on the left. It is about a mile long walk along the lake that is not a lake, (there are no lakes in the lake district) Brothers Water, covered mostly by trees, it was in this autumnal beauty spot that I saw my second ever Red Squirrel. I’ve only seen two, both seen while out stone hunting, a movement off to my right drew my eye, but it was only a grey squirrel, but there half way up a tree behind the grey was a bright red Red Squirrel, I even got a photo of it, not a competition winner, just proof it happened.

After passing Hartsop Hall its into a field and over a river, thankfully bridged. From the Dovedale Beck you cant see the henge, just some big rocks over looking the river, but from these rocks you can see the henge.
What a site !
The biggest facet to this hidden gem of a site is High Hartsop Dodd’s northern sloping ridge, formidable and ominous it keeps an enduring eye over the whole site. The big rocks, some are on the henge and some are seemingly set into the bank, some are small, some are huge, some are confusingly in the henge itself. The henge has half gone, only the west side remains, there is an entrance.

I now have to do that thing that I have to do, not that, climb up the hill of course. With such a big hill right next to the henge I’d have payed to go up that hill (shshushsh!).
The view was really something, on the nice scale it nestled nicely somewhere in between not bad and very nice, plenty of scope for numerous superlatives there.
I went high, high enough for it to occur to me that if I went higher I would be more technically mountain climbing than stone hunting. So I sat and watched the world, it wasn’t doing very much so I looked long and hard at this henge of ours.
Just a few yards outside of where the north east sector would be is what looks like a round cairn, ruined but observable.
But the henge, was it really a henge? where has the other half gone? why are the stones where they are? some in some on the bank, some in the enclosure, it makes no sense. But if it was just a settlement why are they mucking about with these big stones? The placement of the site seems hengish, cornered in as it is by rivers and hills, but were the Neo’s as occupied with water as much as the bronze and iron ages?

I left the place puzzled and uncertain, I want it to have been a henge, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that out that it was, but I found myself coming down slightly more on the side of settlement in the end.

Benlaight North Cairn is an oval green spot in brown moorland at NX 21190 61119. It measures c. 20 feet E-W and 15 feet N-S up to a height of c. 1 foot in the centre. Small earth-set stones protrude from the centre. It is probably a robbed out small cairn.
There is a cairn c. 25 yards W at NX 21170 61117 on a W facing slope. The shape is irregular and there are scattered small stones in the centre indicating that it could be a clearance cairn.
Canmore ID 62411 (go to Links) has an account of some low cairns and hut circles in this area.

I don’t get out as much as I used to, for a variety of reasons, I’ve gone from twice a week every week, to maybe half a dozen times a year. But there are days and there are special days, when a special day comes round I have to go out and see some stones, this special day was Halloween, if you’re going to see something, shall we say, “a bit spooky” its going to be today. My true destination is the Dovedale henge down the road, but seeing as I’m passing and there’s a car park and all.....be daft not to.

I parked in the actual car park just north of the stone and began my arduous trek back up to the Christian meeting house monolith (trying to limit my use of the word church) It’s not all that far but up here today the weather is a touch on the wild side, strong winds and sideways stingy face rain. Slipping and staggering I get to the stone not a second too soon, just as I got there the rain really poured, had I not been on the dry side of the stone I’d have been soaked to the skin in seconds.

The Kirkstone is a big natural monolith, not as big as a worshipers holder though, and only from the north does it look like a chapel type building. Today’s congregation of one beholds the Kirkstone with a weather beaten jaundiced eye. Yep big stone looks like a church from over there. On to the henge.