Nine Ladies of Stanton Moor

It’s been dug, it’s been camped on, it’s had fires lit in its centre, but Nine Ladies remains a wonderful, must-visit site. Situated in a perfect fairy clearing amongst silver birch trees, it has a lovely atmosphere. I arrive to find no-one there, amazingly. Apart from one sheep, who steadfastly refuses to move from the circle and appears in all the pictures I take. Well, she was here first after all. It’s funny the things you notice on a repeat visit. I notice the embanked nature of the circle, as well as the fact it’s actually on quite a slope. To be fair, I’ve usually been here in either thick mist or heavy rain (while an archaeological dig was underway), neither of which do much to aid a proper consideration of the place. The King’s Stone outlier seems to be in a sorrier state that I remember, not only graffiti’d but it has had a chunk knocked off along the top edge, exposing the redder stone under the weathering. I stay for a while, until a family arrive and the children have their pictures taken in the circle (hopefully the start of their own stone-appreciation?). I head east, noticing what look like some small cairns in an area that’s been cleared of vegetation.