Sunday 29 June 2003
We parked atthe bottom of the hill where the road turns left into a tree-surrounded farm.
Following the path south up onto the moor, there’s a nice bit of particularly ‘old-looking’ (if you see it you’ll know what I mean) limestone pavement off to the right.
Walk past this and still looking right, you’ll very quickly see various lumps of rock, including 2 ‘erratics’ that are noticeably bigger than anything else. Wait until these 2 biggest stones line up with each other and strike off the path towards them.
Walk straight past the erratics, perhaps a couple of hundred yards keeping in as straight a line as you can. This should lead you to a point where you can’t miss the Oddendale circle, if not to the circle itself!
And we’re back in Gunnerkeld territory – a double circle, but this time under a really, really HUGE sky!!!! On such a sunny clear breezy day it really was like standing on the roof of England!!!
Burl’s description of Oddendale calls it (and by implication, Gunnerkeld) a ‘composite ring’ and likens it to some on Dartmoor that I don’t think I’m familiar with. His description makes it sound almost like it was originally like a ‘mini-Clava Cairn or something….
The actual stones here are generally fairly small – smaller than Gunnerkeld, anyway I think. Otherwise, again Fitzcoraldo’s said it all! A beautiful place, though pretty inhospitable in bad weather and boggy a lot of the time, I suspect. Liked it a lot.