This circle is in a magnificent spot atop a small hill roughly equidistant between Mither Tap and Tap o’Noth. So no wonder the Picts marked an already ancient stone, they must’ve loved this place as a prominent point between two forts, especially ift hey used beacons. I figure an ancient track went past it, and it was probably quite the highway back in the day.
It’s a real shame that a bunch of heathens has tried so hard to blow up the recumbent, it looks a bit sad now, all angular at the ends and yet still unbroken in spirit. Ritchie was already commenting on this attempted idiocy in 1909, so it’s not recent damage. I would blame the ancient landowner but Welfare mentions shepherds who used the recumbent as the back of an almighty fireplace for boiling tar!? I really don’t know why you would do that at the top if a hill, but the stones still standing in the RSC do bear black marks :(
The fallen stones at the circle are a blend of field collection, a possible inner cairn and probably a few fallen orthostats. As my pix show, there’s a stone in the ground halfway between the circle and the outliers, plus another possible outlier at the edge of the trees. The pinky sunset was lush!