stolinskie

stolinskie

Frendraught

I went to Forgue and parked at the Walter Scott hall (in use but closed when I was there). I walked up past the school and into the woods. On reflection, it seems a strange place to put a school – right up a hill on the edge of a village – but I suppose back in the day there were a lot of kids coming down the hill from crofts and farms, unlike today. As a sidenote, there are two churches in Forgue and they are both placed on gorgeous sites across the burn from each other and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are built on top of more ancient monuments.

It was a nice walk up the hill through the trees, beech and pine. I walked past the “turn off” over the fence to Raich stone circle, which I visited on the way back. I carried on up the track with trees on one side and fields on the other, until using the OS app it was judged time to take a right down a track, sticking to the countours of the hill. This led me along a winding path until the OS app told me i was next to the circle, so I advanced 5 metres into a mess of fallen trees and torn up earth (see pix). Checked the app again, turned round and the quartz encrusted stone was right behind me! I was excited at first because I thoguht it was a massive chunk of quartz (as at Auchmaliddie, which I’d love to visit), but having look at the other pix here it seems to only have a wee bit on top. Pretty though and interesting that there was similar rock at Raich nearby.

But yeah the site was an impenetrable, indecipherable mess, with trees blocking everything from access to view. Frankly I see this as the responsibility of the land owner to sort out since they should be maintaining an ancient monument on “their” land. I don’t think these trees came down that recently and I noticed the track was being kept clear in any case, so there are people about. To sum up: I found the three stones of the smashed recumbent with difficulty, had a picnic, it started raining, I left. And that was it.

Ha’ Hillock

I’ve been meaning to check out this mound a while and today was the day. After long deliberations, I decided that the layby just by the bridge down from Nether Blairock farmhouse was ok to park in since it’s not a passing place. I def think about these things too much, but on the flipside I’d also be mortified if I parked somewhere that was in the way.

I went under the bridge and up the burn, coz I do loves a bit of stream exploration. Underneath it’s obvious that the bridge is doubled, presumably from when they widened the turnpike. Half stream walking, half following the deer tracks, I ended up at the base of the mound next to a badger latrine.

The mound seen up close is impressive and certainly man-made. It’s steep climb to the top, although not a long one because it’s only 8m high (3m from the field beside it). Did people live there? It seems small for that, but Dunadd also seemed small and that was centre of a kingdom back in the day! Now sitting peaceful in the trees beside the B-road, the mound would have had a commanding position over the turning to Kirkton of Deskford. In 2019, a core sample was taken and it was dated to between 386 BC and 206 BC.

A colleague suggested that the people who lived here then moved on to build Inaltry Castle, I’m not sure about that because there’s also Davie’s Castle (a hillfort) nearby and this place seems more ceremonial than a defended citadel. It’s also pretty close to the Deskford ritual centre, where the carnyx was found. In any case, it proved a lovely short visit which cheered me right up on a crispy October day in 2024.

Link

Deskford ritual centre
Ancient Village / Settlement / Misc. Earthwork
Context for a carnyx: excavation of a long-lived ritual site at Leitchestown, Deskford, Moray, north-east Scotland

Excavations at the findspot of the Deskford carnyx, a major piece of Iron Age decorated metalwork found in a bog in the early nineteenth century, revealed a special location with a long history. Early Neolithic activity on the adjacent ridge consisted of massive postholes and pits, suggesting a ceremonial site. An Early Bronze Age cremation became the focus for a feasting event in the Middle Bronze Age. Around this time, peat began to form in the valley, with vessels of pot and wood smashed and deposited there; these activities on ridge and bog may be connected. Activity in the bog intensified in the later Iron Age, when offerings included quartz pebbles, the dismantled carnyx head, and two unusual animal bone deposits. The ridge was cut off at this period by a complex enclosure system. This Iron Age activity is interpreted as communal rituals at a time of increasing social tension. The site’s significance in this period may stem from its unusual landscape character, with flowing water to one side and a bog to the other. The area saw occasional activity in the Early Medieval period, but its significance had waned.

Old Rayne

Visited in November 2024, when access was quite easy becuase the crop (barley?) had been harvested. The stones seemed a bit sad and neglected, but as others have said, wow what a stunning location.

Link

Altar Stone
Oath Stone
Stonehenge and its Altar Stone: the significance of distant stone sources

Abstract
Geological research reveals that Stonehenge’s stones come from sources beyond Salisbury Plain, as recently demonstrated by the Altar Stone’s origins in northern Scotland more than 700 km away. Even Stonehenge’s huge sarsen stones come from 24 km to the north, while the bluestones can be sourced to the region of the Preseli Hills some 225 km away in west Wales. The six-tonne Altar Stone is of Old Red Sandstone from the Orcadian Basin, an area that extends from the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland to Inverness and eastwards to Banff, Turriff and Rhynie. Its geochemical composition does not match that of rocks in the Northern Isles, so it can be identified as coming from the Scottish mainland. Its position at Stonehenge as a recumbent stone within the southwest arc of the monument, at the foot of the two tallest uprights of the Great Trilithon, recalls the plans of recumbent stone circles of north-east Scotland. Unusually strong similarities in house floor layouts between Late Neolithic houses in Orkney and the Durrington Walls settlement near Stonehenge also provide evidence of close connections between Salisbury Plain and northern Scotland. Such connections may be best explained through Stonehenge’s construction as a monument of island-wide unification, embodied in part through the distant and diverse origins of its stones.

Memsie Burial Cairn

It must’ve been around 2019 that I was here. As others have said, it’s an impressive site in terms of size and feeling in spite of a drab location.

Davie’s Castle

I went here in late 2024 – it’s a cool site which was fairly easy to find using the OS map, although of course I ended up on the wrong side of the burn and had to scale the steepest edge. The problem is that so many of the trees have now fallen over that it’s impenetrable. I couldn’t even walk around the ditch completely. In a way that’s nature at work, in a way it’s a shame to see an ancient site becoming inaccessible. Of course on a longer time scale it doesn’t matter, the trees will prob all be gone in decades!

Closed for winter

Ballindalloch Castle and grounds were only open Tuesday 26th March – Thursday 26 September 2024 according to visitscotland.com and when I passed by in December 2024 there was a closed gate and a big sign saying closed. I suppose greywether when saying park on the A95 is talking about the layby a bit to the south. I thought I might come back but had such a great time at nearby Upper Lagmore that I didn’t bother.

Miscellaneous

Upper Lagmore
Clava Cairn

This Clava passage grave appears to be built on a platform but this is perhaps illusory, formed by ploughing round the site combined with the spread of cairn material from the internal mound.
The latter has a contiguous kerb of 13.0x13.5m diameter. This is graded towards the entrance to the south, where the stones are up to 1.05m high. The two end stones to the passage protrude slightly beyond the kerb.
This passage is c5.0m long and leads to a central circular chamber of c3.5m diameter. Much of both these features is buried, the chamber roof has collapsed but much of the passage may still retain its capstones. Two of the latter are visible. The stone circle is 2.0-3.0m outside the kerb with the space increasing to the south. The stones are also graded in this direction and their spacing becomes wider here.

Quoting from p60 of The Design and Distribution of stone Circles in Britain; a Reflection of Variation in Social Organization in the Second and Third
Millennia BC. – A thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of
Philosophy in the Department of Archaeology and Prehistory. University of Sheffield. December 1987. by John Barnatt.

Upper Lagmore

I love going to ancient sites and experiencing what happens when I get there (if I get there). Sometimes as with Castle Rigg, I am left underwhelmed and thinking it probably wasn’t the right time to visit; on the flipside, my visit to Upper Lagmore came exactly at the right and put me in a good mood for 2025. Then there’s a place like Avebury that just gets better on every visit!

Whilst poking around at Lagmore East, I spied Upper Lagmore up the hill and worked out a possible route. I ended up walking back past my car parked in the golf club / distillery car park, up a small track over the burn and then going down the minor road looking for a way over the barbed wire fence. I hopped it down at the field corner by the A road then zigzagged up the hill.

When I got to the site, I felt watched and was quite confused trying to work out what exactly I was looking at, thinking it must have been a place that had been used and re-used. Then the clouds cleared and wow! a rainbow came out. I wandered from stone to stone, appreciating its location in the landscape. The surrounding hills are beautiful and you can’t see the river but you know it’s near. Plus there’s a great view down to East Lagmore – I imagined (without evidence) that there was probably another stone circle somewhere previously, perhaps up the hill where now a derelict farmhouse stands, or perhaps past East Lagmore at the hunting lodge.

An amazing place!

Durn Hill

Lovely hill, extremely windy when I went up in December. I ascended up a path from the quarry side and beside a gate saw a bunch of stones which seemed to me could well be a former stone circle, although I cannot find anything on the old maps to confirm that. The stones are piled up at 57.664767, -2.715907.

As an aside I was using peakfinder.com to identify the hills I could see, what a great tool!

Tarrieclerack

I went there the other day, have to say there isn’t much to see. There’s some trees fallen over on top of the cairn, which seems like it could be two ring cairns rather than a long cairn. Whilst some cairns are quite impressive, this one is rather hidden away in the gorse.

Developed into housing

The windmill is currently (2024) being developed into housing ... not sure how I feel about that but the cairn is of course long gone so perhaps it’s good it’s restored and repaired.
pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen-aberdeenshire/3128305/historic-north-east-windmill-could-be-turned-into-unique-family-home/

I did like the plan to turn it into an underground whisky bar and aurora borealis viewing station better, anything with a public function really.
napier.ac.uk/about-us/news/cup-and-saucer-could-be-transformed-into-leading-tourist-attraction