Image Wood

Also known as:
Aboyne
Nearest town:
Ballater (17km WSW)
OS reference:
NO524985
OS sheets:
37, 44
Latitude:
57° 4' 30.29 N
Longitude:
2° 47' 6.84 W
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Image Wood

postman
postman Aug 14, 2017

The OS grid reference number is out slightly, the real grid ref is NO 524990.

I didn’t know a great deal about this stone circle, in fact only the name of the place had stuck in my mind, Image wood, funny name, how did it get to be called that? The Scots have a wicked sense of humour when it comes to naming places, anyone who comes up with a place name like Twatt, twice, clearly should be in charge of naming places.

I didn’t park near the cemetery, I parked on the B9094, where the Deeside way footpath crosses it. I did have a look down the long straight driveway up to the big posh place called the Mains of Aboyne, north of the circle, but there’s no way to it that way, it’s slightly further than parking by the cemetery, but I’m new here and making it up as I go along.

The woods are very pretty, light and airy, paths go all over the place, picking the one I hoped went in the right direction wasn’t easy, I got it hopelessly wrong and ended up mostly guessing my way there, but get there I did, eventually.
Canmore calls it a four poster, of that i’m fairly dubious, mostly because there’s five stones, but also because Burl says there’s a couple of missing stones, but Burl also goes on to say that it could be a folly built by the big house just north of here.

What ever the reality is behind this circle, one thing for sure is that it’s a good looking site. Sites up on a hill with great views is only just in front, in my mind, to a nice secluded woodland site.
Lovely place.

Image Wood

C
CARL Jul 26, 2012

Visited 16.6.12

4th stone circle of the morning – can’t be bad!

We parked at the cemetery and the others stayed in the car while I walked up through the oak trees to the stone circle. (5 minute walk)
After the last 3 weeks it was nice to be able to walk through trees for a change!

The stone circle itself is tiny – only about 5 metres across.
2 stones are about 0.5m high – 1 of pink stone
3 stones are about 1m high.
All the stones are covered in lichen.

This is a lovely little circle and well worth stopping off to visit.

Image Wood

thelonious
thelonious Mar 4, 2012

04/03/2012 – I’ve lost count the amount of times I’ve driven past the turn off for this and said I must visit the stone circle up there one day. Well today we did. Reading the other fieldnotes I totally agree, this is a lovely little circle in a lovely setting. I can’t think of any similar round here. Well worth a visit. Stones seem to blend with the surrounding oak trees this time of year.

Image Wood

Vicster
Vicster Oct 29, 2008

What an absolute beaut! After a lovely, cool walk through the woods, we came across this cracking little circle and were more than pleased we decided to come – the heat of the day was starting to get to us and all we had really wanted to do was head back to Ballater and have a pint of cider!

We had struggled to see how we could get here at first, missing the turning twice – we hadn’t realised that we needed to park by the cemetary and then walk. We obviously need to go on a map-reading course!

We sat in the dappled sunlight and just drank it all in. This tiny circle is made of up of improbably large stones and we spent a good hour just pottering around, enjoying the peace and solitude of this site. This is the most perfect spot and is the most perfect, small circle.

Image Wood

Jane
Jane Jul 30, 2006

This wasn’t on our itinerary, but we were driving past and couldn’t resist a peep. This was a ‘bonus track’. The map showed a potentially tedious walk which could be a hot, hideous waste of 20 precious minutes. You shouldn’t really go ‘off roading’ in a Mazda 626 but I like a challenge. So at the point where most sensible people would park and walk, I drove on. Success!

Tucked away among oak woodland in the grounds of a hotel/conference centre thing stand five lovely good sized stones set close together in a fairy-ring stylee. From their relative positions, it seemed to me that either two stones were missing or it was a four-poster with an extra one slotted in for a reason I couldn’t conceive.

Completely charming!

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