Jane

...it’s quite astonishing!
It is a shame it’s had to be housed in this way, but to preserve its wonders, definitely worth it. A large stone shed with metal and skylighted roof from which a series of walkways take you over the tomb, which is simply HUGE! A great lozenge shaped heap of stones and rubble, carefully corbelled at an angle on the outside walls, thick rubble and then through the middle a passageway 23ms long, yes – 23 of your earth metres! – with at least 12 pairs of stalls, some with little stone beds. Like all the other tombs on Orkney, the quality of the masonry is precise and in places, painstaking. Each stone marking out a stall is about 5 or 6 feet high and neatly fits into the passage walls.

This is easily one of the finest, grandest pieces of neolithic engineering I’ve ever seen. Certainly as impressive as Maeshowe. It feels like a temple.

We wondered ‘why so big?’, ‘why here?’ and not least ‘how on earth...!?’ We mused on it’s
usage and wondered if as time had gone on, the bones of the dead had been moved over the centuries further down the passageway through successive stalls into the tomb, like a journey, until the bones reach the very end head stone, after which, that person becomes a fully-fledged ‘ancestor’.

The ‘why here?’ question was more easily answered as we looked around for a place to picnic out of the wind by the cliffs. The tomb is built right on the shoreline, next to the flat sandstone rocks which form the water’s edge, which chip and flake and can be quarried easily. To build a tomb of that magnitude, it’s easier if access to the thousands of tons of building material is near at hand. And so it is. You can almost see where the stones were cut from.

A large flat block of sandstone 6 or 7 feet tall and 8 inches thick, straight sided and flat topped at a slight angle, this has had a chunk taken out of it, as if some alien rockeater had taken a bite and rejected the rest. It’s a nice stone, but pales into insignificance when surrounded by such wonderful cairn building.

Unlike the other tombs on Rousay, this isn’t in the care of Historic Scotland, so there are no signs, footpaths or easy accesses. This requires determination. To reach it, one must pass through incredibly high, verdant weeds and grasses on uneven ground up a hillside which I found very tough going.

It’s very big and long and tall and I couldn’t see where the entrance was at all. A little of the rubble of the cairn showed through the grass on the top. But I didn’t hang around as the cold beat me. And I now know that I missed out.

Moth continued on poking about, going up to the Knowe of Ramsay further up the hillside from where he spotted the very overgrown entrance to Lairo. He returned to the car 30 mins later lost for superlatives about what he discovered. I’ll let him tell the rest...

The sign at the roadside says 1/2 mile to walk. But the walk is up quite a steep hillside, so take your time if you’re not a confident walker. I found it a bit slippy. It’s a nice walk though, past a load of noisy fulmars nesting on the rocky outcrops on the hillside.

It’s always damned windy in Orkney, but the gale on that hillside was vicious and bitingly cold. I was very glad to find this tomb was also concrete covered and sealed with a big metal door, giving both the tomb and me some protection from the wind. I took the opportunity to make a quick sketch of the chamber without my paints flying away. I paced out the length at 14ms.

Each side has evenly spaced stalls of big flat stones. The head stone at the end of the
passageway was bright green with alien blood lichen again.

My first double-deckered chambered cairn! Topped with a rounded concrete roof with skylight, this tomb is a tardis. You enter via the back into the upper deck, which has ‘stalls’ in the typically Orcadian fashion. There’s hole in the middle with a metal ladder to climb down into lower deck. The lower chamber is as big as the upper with a side chamber, if I remember rightly, and long passageway (the original entrance) facing to the front – and the sea. Because of the slope of the ground, it makes perfect sense that the tomb is split level. What impressed me is the sheer size of the flat stones that make up the floor or the upper deck/ceiling of the lower deck and the perfection of the masonry built round it.

The whole place had the feeling of a ship – tight for space and neat compartments.

I was intrigued by the luminous green powdery lichen growing inside the tomb, which made it look as if alien blood had been spilled. This appears to grow in all of Rousay’s tombs.

Outside, at the front, is a metal hatch which protects another chamber, but is outside the main mound.

Wheeliebin. But this ain’t no trash. It’s a whopper!

In a landscape surrounded by shedloads of fabulous chambered cairns, littered with single standing stones, and the most romantic stone circle I’ve ever seen* it’s easy to overlook or not truly appreciate places like this.

When we parked up next to it, I thought ‘yeah, yeah, just another standing stone’, but get up close and FEEL this one – it gets so much BIGGER the close you get. It must be 14 feet tall and perhaps 6 feet wide at its broadest point.

And it must be highly dangerous because the landowner has caged it in with viscious barbed wire. If you’re up at the top end of Mainland, near the Brough of Birsay, swing by here, its worth a glance at least.

*Brodgar

Enroute back from John O’Groats, Moth suggested we call in here despite the HIDEOUS weather and the fact it was getting late. I was persuaded that it was a good idea largely because it is next to the road, and actually only about 2ks from the main A9.

I was expecting a horseshoe, or a squashed circle in some way, open at one end, but what greeted me was most unexpected.

Imagine two parallel lines of stones with a semicircle connecting them at one end, the other end left open and you have it! ‘Great U’ is a very accurate description of this site.

The rhythm of the stones is surprisingly complete and regular. Oddly, the playing card shaped stones stand narrow side on to the centre rather than broad side. I have never seen this before. Oh and it’s HUGE!

My God, if you could get here in good weather, it would be unbelievable! As it was, we got cold, wet and windchilled within seconds. Moth climbed up to a nearby cairn to try to get a ‘long shot’, but could see nothing the mizzle was so thick.

This place KICKS ASS!

This is so close to a little lane, you could look at this without even getting out of your car. But do so, because it is quite charming. Climb over the gate (it’s padlocked) and you’ll see that the stones are big, almost out of proportion thethe diameter of the circle. But it’s quite a complete. It has the same character as Little Meg to me.

After asking permission and having walked west through the trees towards the M6 you have to climb over either a seriously wobbly gate or cheat death by clambering over a wall which threatens to fall and kill you at any time. I like a gamble so I went for the wall of death. I survived. Only after entering the field did I realise that it was right in front of me on a slight rise! I got a real shock. Cos its really fab! Big old rocks, most of them down but best of all you get two for the price of one with added cairny bit in the middle! Concentric! How cool is that?

The M6 is very VERY close – about 12 metres away – but somehow, it didn’t matter because the stones spoke with a louder voice. This one had got away with it and survived! Wonderful!

Though I nearly didn’t as the wall attempted to wreak its evil revenge on me as we returned, hurling rocks at my legs as it partially collapsed as I climbed up. The survival instinct kicked in and I went over the gate instead. Be careful!

Its a whopper. A great big fist of a stone, now standing in concrete shoes. You don’t really get a sense of its deep immensity until you’re right up close. Its footprint is dressed squarely but the looming bulk of it seems to rise like a blobby undressed mass as if the builders lost interest in cutting any more of it half way up.

Unlike nearby Kemp Howe, its not pink.

Lovely big pink stones, just like those at Gamelands have here, been cruelly bisected by the railway line. It’s quite shocking.

And you could see this place as megalithic roadkill, but I prefer to see it in a different way. As one of the those people who has a secret love of waving at trains (preferably from a beautiful trackside location, which this isn’t) Kemp Howe gets its own back on the railway line builders and waves at trains everyday. It may have been built over, but it certainly ain’t out.

The big round stones are all down and today lie deep in the tall meadow peppered with buttercups and daisies. Look closely and you’ll see the stones are pink – bright, sparkly Barbara Cartland pink, shimmering and round like something sensual and erotic, ironically in a way that Barbara Cartland wasn’t. The stones are in proportion to the diameter of the circle somehow – people reading this who have seen a lot of circles will know exactly what I mean. It’s impressive but lacks the ‘oomph’ of Swinside and of Castlerigg. Visit it anyway. Just to see how pink it is.

Counting the field boundaries to find our way, we looked over the gate at the top and there it was! Looking down the hill, the stones were almost too small to see but raised up on their little platform they became clear. Fourteen or perhaps even sixteen tiny weeny stones make up this most charming of circles at the side of a valley. The level platform is the perfect stage for the minuscule stones to dance endlessly around. I cannot state powerfully enough just how small the stones are and cannot express my amazement enough of how these frail and vulnerable stones have survived. The land here is unploughable and this maybe what has saved it. A man with a sharp spade could have all these stones up in a couple of hours.

A couple of the stones were badly cracked, one was quite loose. But the peace here... the peace! We picnicked, we sat, we lay down, we chilled out. Perfection. Come here.

For directions, see my miscellaneous post below.

No idea what is going on here and the light was too flat to see any real sculpting to make out a pattern or intention. In the same way that the short earthwork avenue heading out from Arbor Low looks incomplete or abandoned, so does this.

What a cool place. Even sitting on the banks of the henge at Arbor Low, surveying all the great monument’s glories, Gib Hill’s little head kept catching the corner of my eye. It has a very graceful shape, and proportionally (height/width/angle of slope) really does remind you of Silbury.

It still has some nice stones lying exposed on it too.

Not difficult to find thanks to a number of homemade wooden signs, you can see where you’re heading as this place is so high up. The remaining two uprights of the best preserved chamber peep up above the drystonewalls as you approach. But it’s not until you’re virtually on top of it that you realise just what a whopping great mound this must have been not so very long ago.

Someone had already been to the tomb when we got there, for a small fire had been lit at the back of the main chamber. The farmer had dumped some empty chemical canisters in there and Moth discovered a dirty nappy, recently dumped.

What a shame that such a special place should be so disrespected.

On the old footpath between Cleveley and Church Enstone to the east of Enstone village, I finally located this stone.

This is a big lump of a stone about 4 and half feet high and a fat diameter of about 2 feet, now nestling by the drystone wall overlooking a the river Glyme and a nearby waterfall.

It is reported to have been moved from its original location in recent years.

There are two stones to see in Lidstone.

Leodwine’s stone, also known as King Lud’s stone and another one, which I can’t find a name for in any of the material I have, further up the hill at the roadside.

Leodwine’s stone is an unimpressive lump now built into the end of a wall. In 1235, this Lidenstan was described as located in a of the field on the edge of the village.

The second -unnamed- stone looks mightily unimpressive at first glance, but pulling back the ivy and spring vegetation reveals a monolith, perhaps 2 feet high, up on a bank, leaning into a wall, like a mini Thor stone at nearby Taston. This one stands at the top of the hill at a sharp bend.

3 April 2004:Every stone has been defaced with Jackson Pollock-type splatters of primrose yellow gloss paint, applied with a small 1” house painters brush, I would guess, as the splatters are small and streaky. A larger brush would carry far more paint. Every stone, large and small has been attacked both front and back. The grass is splattered, the earth is splattered and I feel personally violated by this mindless vandalism.

I wept with horror at the stupidity of it: the maliciousness defacing of this most beautiful of ancient places, which also happens to be at the geographical The Epicentre of My World. Someone, somewhere, probably a local, deliberately planned it, deliberately set out to strike at every stone from every angle.

Ye gods! I was happy to finally reach Buzza as it signalled the end of The Long March.

High up on a hill overlooking Hugh Town, the harbour, two beaches and pretty much 50 per cent of St Mary’s, this cairn is not pretty or charming or a ‘wowwing’ discovery or showy. But is it here in the most commanding position of all, keeping watch.

I really liked it because you can step right down into its little box chamber and be partly protected by the single remaining capstone.

Very accessible if you have limited time on St Mary’s.

A mighty tomb with big stones and a big chamber now cruelly amputated by a main road. Yet despite the loss of its legs this is still a very powerful place, sandwiched in clear line of sight between the pretty dancing Merry Maidens stone circle and Gun Rith menhir which lurks in a hedgerow in the opposite field.

If you’re heading out to see the Merry Maidens, then don’t overlook Tregiffian, its well worth a look-see.

Just a couple of fields away from Men an Tol this 6’ standing stone is worth checking out if you’re en route up the path toward the Nine Maidens. You really can’t miss it. The light was awful to see the inscriptions when we were there at about 11.30am, I guess it’s better in the summer in the late afternoon.

If you want views, then Mulfra’s the place for you. From up here you can see St Michaels Mount, Ding Dong mine, Penzance, the hanging gardens of Babylon...

Knowing my reluctance to walk distances, we chose the shortest route for us to reach it, up an incredibly steep slope, wading through the gorse and heather on something which could only loosely be called a path.

But it IS worth the agro. This place is magic. The light was good on the crazy slanting capstone and I sketched as quickly as a could, but the paint was reluctant to dry, it was so cold.

This would be a fantastic place to spend hours hanging out at. Come when its warm!

Situated more or less half way between the Cheesewring and the Hurlers this barrow survives as an uneven tump which is actually quite difficult to spot in the heavily mined landscape. Indeed, we walked right past it first time.

The entrance is part way up the mound and hidden from view unless you start climbing up the mound. I was disappointed that I couldn’t get in (partly to get out of the cold wind) but I suspect its quite unstable in there.

It’s nothing to write home about now, but once this must have been massive, before the treasure-seekers got to work on it to dig up the most glorious ribbed golden cup, now in the British Museum.

A huge, flat triangular single stone about 8’ tall at the apex with a bloody great round hole carved in it, stands in the back garden of cottage. But not in the middle of the garden, oh no, it’s just 6’ away from the back door! How it wasn’t moved or trashed when the white-washed cottage was built in the mid 19th century is a mystery.

Weird and wonderful and I want one, too!

I had been warned that this, though a ‘must-see’, might disappoint. Fortunately my expectations were sufficiently low that I wasn’t disappointed. Just curious.

It is SOOOOOO small and quite obviously mucked about with, for surely this was once part of a stone circle?

It’s a fun place though and trying to crawl through the hole (despite the mud) is almost irresistible.

An unlikely overgrown hummock turned out to be one of my favourite places in the whole of Penwith.

There are a few graves here, but the one blew me away. Dreadlocked with brambles and gorse, I set to work with ocifant’s ‘Leatherman’ [TM] clearing the tangles away from the entrance with the handy saw to gain access to the tomb. And I was well rewarded with a 10’ long chamber, maybe 3’ high with 3 lovely capstones. The walls were of large stones. I crawled in and sat at the back for some time. A fox had made his home here in a burrow within the chamber.

This one looked like nothing but turned out to be reet special. A real discovery, and not unlike the tombs on Scilly, though I wasn’t to find that out till the next day.

Witnessing the sun set over Carn Gluze, I was aware that tonight the moon would be full. Moth suggested we witness the moon rise at Lanyon Quoit, as its so easy to get to.

En route, as we drove past Porthmeor standing stone, the moon jumped out at us, dazzling and low, and we knew we were in for a special treat. We were not to be disappointed.

Clouds scudded past the moon in the east illuminating the quoit with an eery light, and the last vestiges of the sunset silhouetted the site in the west. What a light show! What a quoit!

We returned here in the daylight twice, but neither time was the weather kind enough for me to paint it.

The moondogchickengoosestone, as we preferred to call it, stands in a field opposite Porthmeor farmhouse and whenever we happened to pass it, morning, noon or night, some kind of Old MacDonald thing was going on.... dogs, horses, geese, chooks, cows...

On the way to see the fullmoon rise over Lanyon Quoit, we passed this stone and as the car swung round the corner by this stone, the full moon appeared in the sky straight in front, almost dazzling us, huge and low and bright. And in the corner of my eye I saw a sheepdog at the roadside, spinning round and round and round chasing its tail in the moonlight.

This stone does crazy things to animals.

This massive, carefully restored cairn was given its name after excavation and renovation in 1899. It’s a real platform, rising maybe a metre of an half from the level ground and is edged by kerbstones all the way round and has a diameter of around 6 or 7 metres. It has a long low chamber topped by big capstones with a tight squeeze of an entrance partly blocked by a deliberately placed slab.

I was desperate to paint its soft, cushiony shape and hang out here a bit! But as it was, the wind up here was howling so I was only able to do a notated sketch whilst we munched our picnic. I was happy to get in the long chamber, not least to get out of the wind which felt colder as the sun disappeared behind the thickening clouds.

Although this is probably the Scillies’ main ‘hollywood’ site, I didn’t like it here as much as the Innisidgens.

A glorious cairn with a long chamber – about 4 and half metres, with four great capstones. These are only just breaking through the top grassy covering of the cairn giving the appearance of exposed ribs.

Its kerbstones keep it from flopping, so it still looks pert and strong. Not only is the cairn itself heart-stoppingly perfect, it’s location is breathtaking with views over turquoise seas facing east to St Martin’s and the scatter of the Eastern Isles.

By heck, this place is lovely!

Down the slope a bit and closer to the sea than Innsidgen Upper, this cairn has mostly lost its kerbstones. Its chamber is now open at both ends and has only two capstones left which are completely exposed: its a lot more ruined than its sister, Innsidgen Upper.

But it is charming – covered and surrounded by a well-manicured soft carpet of closely cropped heathers and moss, giving it the appearance of a pom-pom.

We literally stumbled upon (or should I say INTO) this ruined cairn on the south of St Mary’s as we were walking along the clifftop path that skirts the end of the runway of St Mary’s airport.

I had to get into it, of course, and felt around with my foot to see if there was still an open chamber underneath, and there was.

Think of all the superlatives one could lavish upon a place and you have accurately summed up Boskawen-Un.

The proportions of the size of the stones and their intervals and the size they enclose are all just about perfect. Nestled in gorse, they’re not that far from the road but it feels like a different world. We leaned up against a west facing stone and watched the sun set, the shadows lengthen and literally thousands of starlings wheel and whirr around us as they went off to roost.

The stones seem to whirl and spin around their madly leaning axis stone.

Moth had been here before, of course, and was ridiculously keen to show it to me. I now see why.

If you can see only one site in Land’s End, make it this.

Just a stone’s throw from the ever-dominant ruin of Ding Dong tin mine’s 19th century engine house, we found this wonderful place with the help of Ian McNeil Cooke’s book ‘Journey To The Stones’, while en route and on foot from the Nine Maidens to Lanyon Quoit.

This such a wonderful place, its skin ripped off to reveal its internal structures to the elements. A splendid long grave, open at the top now, lined with big flat slabs faces east to greet the morning sunrise and lovely kerbstones ring the whole rubbly construction.

Definitely worth poking around in the gorse for!

This turned out to be quite a surprise. I wasn’t expecting much at all, and although many the stones were horribly littered about, you could still make sense of a chamber (two of the side slabs still stand) and a capstone – albeit a capstone partly morphed into a millstone. It still has enough to satisfy.

It also sits on a nice little mound about 70cms high so you get a real feeling for its size.

We couldn’t find anyone to ask about entering the field, so we climbed over the wall and walked along the field edges as respectfully as possible, other than when I fell over in the mud! Ha!

What a wonderful little barrow this is, crouching like a hermit crab on the edge of big field. We were expecting it to be overgrown and gorsey, but some kind soul had recently been along with the secateurs.

It still retains a pleasing amount of height and nearly all of its kerbstones.

Whooo! This one’s a whopper! Amidst an area teeming with standing stones, this one really stands out – and its the sheer bulk and height that does it. It was flatter and wider than I first thought and perhaps 3 or 4 metres high.

When we saw it, it looked beautiful surrounded by rows of scented narcissus. Lovely!

What a reet bugger to find! With two maps, a diagram AND ocifant’s GPS, we still spent over 40 minutes scouring about eight fields before we spotted it. But it was worth the hunt to see its ancient construction. There was other evidence of quite a large settlement here.

...a piece of cake to find, thank God. Isolated on the edge of a field, it’s gorsey mound forcing the ground up slightly, we reached it as dusk fell and the hand of starvation threatened to force me to murder Moth and consume his flesh in some debauched food ritual.

A very impressive chamber about 8 metres long and high enough to force me to have to reach up to feel the stones overhead. I was intrigued by its isolation. Every other fogou we had visited had some sign of settlement very close or nearby. This has nothing now. Perhaps it once did.

It’ s clearly marked on the roadmap, but a reet bugger to find the access to. All the access roads to the Trelowarren estate said “No Entry” and we were on the verge of giving up when we stumbled across the main entrance back at the Garras end. Halligye fogou is clearly signposted once you’re in. But we were to be disappointed. It was already dusk and although we found the fogou, a padlocked metal gate barred our entry to the main passageway. But the approach itself is impressive: great keyhole-shaped slit in the earth, (Moth said he thought it looked like something specific to women, but I can’t repeat what here!) recently shored up with new walling and steps. But the fogou’s locked chastity belt prohibited us from further investigation.

Allowing our eyes to become accustomed to the blackness, we could just make our the creep at the end of the passage. I fear we missed something special here :-(

It was wonderful to see a fogou within the context of an ancient village and to muse upon what it might have been for. It was here that it became obvious to me that this fogou was a place to store the excess goodies; the community’s ‘bank’, ‘saving’s account’ or ‘life insurance’ policy, if you like. It’s construction is quite amazing, especially the internal beehive chamber, leading off from the main passageway – a masterpiece of engineering, 3 metres tall reaching up to ground level and 5 metres diameter.

The village is wonderful to walk around and easy to imagine a small community of farmers making a living from their land. As you stand in the ruins of their roundhouses you can almost smell the woodsmoke, hear the children playing, the grain being pounded, feel their tie to this land.

It was pouring with rain outside, so the shelter of Boleigh’s gaping dark mouth, moustached by moss and ferns and liverworts seemed rather attractive. The fogou is tall, 7 or 8 feet in places and about 9 metres long, perhaps more and beautifully corbelled. The creep leads off immediately to the left as you enter the fogou. I could just squeeze my child-bearing hips through the crack and I found the creep not only almost doubles back on itself, but rises to virtually ground level.

I loved it here! I felt so protected and quite happy. Not freaked at all.

To reach the entrance of the fogou you must wade in ankle deep slurry and shooo a splendid yet shitty herd of friesians to one side of the farmyard.

Moth’s maglite firmly gripped in hand, I stepped out of the slippy shit and into the darkness. The chamber has a narrow entrance and a steep drop. The height never allows you to stand up, so I walked along, hunchbacked, as far as I could go. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark I realised that the fogou was Y-shaped, with another exquisitely corbelled passageway leading off to the left, just as long as the one I’d just come down – about 7 metres. And from the point where the two main chambers meet, down at the bottom, a little square hole no more than 18 inches high. This is the creep. Squatting down in the mud I shone my torch through the hole to view a rock-cut passageway, again perhaps 7 metres long. For a moment, I felt like Howard Carter! It was only the mud that pervented me squeezing through, though this was no bar for Moth who disappeared through it like a small boy up a chimney. We loved this fogou!

Not entirely easy to find the entrance to this fogou faces seaward in the top edge of a field just off to the left of a track that exits the village at the north.

It was thrilling to find, but disappointing after Pendeen, for this fogou allows you in for the first six feet only before you meet a barrier. It’s been walled-up. Cheers National Trust! Fortunately, NT have not trashed the double entrances and despite the walling-up, it remains a delight to see a fogou lurking in the corner of a forgotten field.

On the eastern edge of St Mary’s, walking south between Innisidgen and Porth Hellick Downs the path passes over Gap Point towards Deep Point where Moth and I spotted five further chambered cairns in varying stages of ruin, peeping out from the carpet of heathers, gorse and moss.

Along the southern end of St Mary’s, Salakee Downs is peppered with chambered cairns, but the gorse and bramble was impenetrable at times. Fortunately for us, there had been a bit of fire which revealed some of the cairns marked on the map. We found one about 7ms in diameter with a virtually complete kerb, with maybe only two of the stones now fallen.

My first Scillonian chambered cairn – and what a place to start! Much restored, this lovely kerbed, stepped cairn nestles into a wall, facing east at the northern end of the island, overlooking Tresco. The four capstones are all exposed and the chamber is about 5 metres in length. There are a lot of stones lying about which were once part of it, but never properly replaced after its early 20th century excavation and rebuild. Nevertheless, this is a real beauty and very evocative.

I sat and marvelled at it in the sparkling light and found myself, Francis of Assisi-like – surrounded by birds: song thrushes, mistle thrushes and to my sheer delight, a male stonechat swooped and sang.

Walk south just beyond the ‘show’ site, the much-restored Great Tomb on Porth Hellick Down, and you stumble across more lovely chambered cairns in various states of disrepair and size. Moth and me found another four without even trying, though it helped that the gorse and heather was not high. The cairns up here are clear to see along the ridge of the Downs from the vantage point of Salakee Downs, a few 100 metres to the west.

I had little idea what I was about to see. ‘Blakey Topping’ sounds like a cheapo, bubblegum-flavoured, powdered dessert mix and not a smooth, graceful sacred hill standing alone, like Kilimanjaro. With the icy wind cutting through my clothes as we got out of the car at the Hole of Horcum car park, and with the threat of a bit of a walk to reach it, I thought: ‘this better be good, Moth.’ I wasn’t disappointed.

As you approach it the way we did, it doesn’t play visual tricks on you like Silbury does, it’s just there and absolutely compelling. It’s hard to take one’s eyes off it. You can feel why the ancients regarded it as sacred in some way, but I couldn’t begin to describe why.

The big surprise for me was the wrecked stone circle in a field nearby. The tallest stone stands about 6 feet high. Others remain standing and some are down but still its hard to know what’s been moved and what hasn’t and so quite diffcult to work out how big it once might have been, or even where its centre was. It’s quite a sheltered spot by the stones and completely dominated by the shape of the hill beyond.