Shiskine

We initially started to walk to this site from the main stones at Machrie Moor but after about 15 minutes of negotiating boggy peatland and peaty bogland, we headed back and decided to drive instead!

We parked at the rather awful Balmichael visitor centre and set off walking along the roadside. We got confused by the Scottish Water building which wasn’t on our map and after much fannying around, realised that the circle was now behind this monstrosity!

This had now become personal! We had already spent about an hour of our time trying to reach this site and nothing was going to hold us back. So, we hopped over the gate, ran across the forecourt and over another gate into a field. A combination of dead heather, gorse and bracken meant that we wandered around for another 15 minutes before FINALLY finding this diminutive circle but boy, were we happy!

The views across to Machrie Moor were spectacular and you can see the main standing stones from here. We had no idea what the circle was called but we named it the Magic Water Cuckoo Stones as we seemed to follow the sound of a cuckoo the whole time we were looking and it finally led us to our destination!

Definitely worth coming here, if only for the aspect, as you can only wonder about what this landscape must’ve looked like, littered with these stunning monuments, 5000 years ago. Fab.

There is another small, ruined 4 Poster close by – only 2 stones now remain.

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