Hob

Happily, Skara Brae can be visited after the visitor centre has closed, so you can have it to yourself, and peruse at leisure.

The glass roof over one of the houses detracts somewhat, but the others are pretty well preserved too, so it’s not that big a deal.

Keep eyes peeles for the carvings, covered by sheets of perspex.

If you’ve a leaning towards gratuitous pondering, also keep an eye out for the suspicious looking stone lying prone between the village and the visitor centre, just inland of the path.

A short hop acros the stile from the stones of Stenness, Barnhouse has two anomalous buildings. They certaintly are bigger than both those surrounding them, and the ones at Skara Brae. It has been suggested that they are not dwellings, but maybe some kind of communal space related to the Stones of Stenness.

There are more structures still under the surface, the whole site having not yet been fully excavated.

Pretty impressive engineering! Big stones, especially the one in the entrance passage. Each of the side chamber blocking stones in isolation are a bit hefty, can’t see that they were shifted in and out very often.

Having said that, the presence of a tombful of other tourists sort of reduced the atmosphere a bit. It had more gravitas the previous evening in the dark, even though the entrance was locked.

Be prepared to crouch on the way in and out.

I don’t know how well accepted the idea that megalithic monuments are placed deliberatly at certain sites to relate to other features in the surrounding landscape is these days. If there’s any truth in it, then ones of the main focal points for this bunch of sites has to be the Isle of Hoy. It keeps popping up as you walk from the various monuments, from Maeshowe to Unstan, From the Barnhouse stones up to Bookan, it’s always there, as much a part of the setting as the Lochs.

If you have the chance to be here, and have the time, leave the car at the first site and walk to the others. Both on the way there and on the way back, each site seems to give out tantalising hints of it’s spatial relationship to the others, and to the area around them.

This place lives up to the hype.

These stones live up to the hype. The flat flagstone means that as you walk around the site, each stone presents a continouously changing aspect. The combination of the three tallest makes the number of angles even greater.
It seemes that the stones have a distinct relationship with the hills of Hoy, which are rather prominent throughout the whole area.

The Watchstone, like the Barnhouse and the Stones of Stenness is clearly visible from the Kirkwall-Stromness road. You cannot miss it.
I couldn’t help but imagine an avenue of stones connecting Stenness and Brogar, though of course, there’s no evidence for this at all.

Like the barnhouse stone, these two are best seen by visiting Brogar from the Stones of Stenness sans automobile. You could see them from the road, but it would be a case of ‘blink and you miss’em’ or even mistake the gateposts up the road for them.

Be wary though, for the road is not wide, and the cars come down fast.

Wideford’s suggestion that the Comet stone not being part of a cove seems right to my untrained eye. The two little stones are just too wee. The mound is definitely there though.

I got the sense that the stone had been moved from it’s original setting, but couldn’t give a rational reason why.

If you walk up to from the Stones of Stenness, careful not to end up in the middle of the rare lowland bog. It’s full of special plants, and not well signposted if you go through the first gate by the comet stone.

The second gate is far better, as you can be sure of seeing the permissive path to the stones.

To the SW side, look out for the recumbent shattered stone, apparently hit by lightning.

I have a slight suspicion that the stone towards the NW, with a ‘v’shaped notch in the top may be there to mark some sun-setting related event or other. It’s nearly right for the sunset of the night before the summer solstice, but not quite.

Can’t vouch for the claims that the stones have acoustic properties. I didn’t want to make a racket.

This is a smart stone.

It’s tall, has buckets of lovely lichen and moss, and despite the sheep protector fence (I assume it’s there to prevent sheep from rubbing the stone and making it fall on them), it has an air of stateliness. It knows that it gets seen from the road, and is self assured in it’s role as the blocking stone of Maeshowe.

Take the time to stop and get out of the car, or nip over if you’re at the stones of Stenness, it’s not far, though the main Kirkwall-Stromness road is busy at times. It can be easily reached through the gate, though as Kammer suggests there is no path. I tried to check for permission with the house directly across the road, but no-one was in (or not answering).

Probably not good for wheelchair users, or anyone with mobility issues.

An very circular enclosure, that has had allegations of hengedom levelled in it’s direction. It does look as if the ditch is inside the bank, but there’s no berm, and only one entrance, to the west. To make matters more confused, an old raiway cutting slices one edge of the earthwork.

It also looked a bit dodgy as it wasn’t on a flat platform, it’s on the curve of a spur of Ewesly fell, which isn’t very hengey from what I know.

There’s another earthwork, rectangular, in the trees beyond.

According to the RSM, this is a 0.7m tall stone, roughly square in section, with grooves on the top, with modern graffitti on the SE side.

A charter of 1238 refers to the stone as ‘The great standing stone on the height’. It’s always seemed odd to me that a stone described as such could be the same one that’s also described as being 70cm tall. There are titchy standing stones in Northumberland, but they rarely get described as ‘great’. The discrepancy here is presumably due to a data entry error or somesuch, as the stone at Bunkerhill looks more like 1.7m tall rather than 0.7m. So still not great in terms of size, but a nice stone nonetheless.

It’s just inside a patch of trees on a very exposed hill with a fantastic view of Hunterheugh, Beanley Moor and Cheviot.

The remains of a tatty old wooden fence, (the kind that normally gets put up to protect stones from being used as rubbing posts) has luckily protected the stone from the top of a fallen pine tree whacking into it.

It’s a fair hike from the entrance to Hulne Park, and permission should be sought before visiting, as access to the northern tracks in the park is restricted.

Bronze age round cairn, mostly soil, with some kerbstones still in place.
11m diameter, i.5m at it’s highest, with a whopping hole, resulting from antiquarian excavation.
There’s a stone in the middle of the hole, which looks like a standard ‘Am I a gatepost or not?” kinda thing, with a gatepost type squared socket, and what might, at a stretch, be a worn cup mark to muddy the issue.

About 20m to the SSW, there’s another stone, about 1.5m tall. Not a gatepost, I’d say, but been used as a rubbing post. It’s not as weathered as the stone at the Poind, but it’s possibly harder stone. It is more weathered than other stones in buildings, walls, gateposts etc in the vicinity.

Both the cairn and the stone are in a ridge and furrow field to the south of Bolam Church. There’s a handy bridleway down the edge of the field.

The cairn is confirmed as BA, but the SMR entry mentions the ‘subsequent re-use’ in reference to the gatepost. I’m not sure what they mean the cairn has been re-used as. A gatepost holder? For a single gatepost? The nearby standing stone is not mentioned at all. So any thoughts of prehistoric provenance for the stone must remain purely speculative.

The Poind (Burial mound) is easily visible from the track from Bolam West houses, where permission to wander about the field can be sought. The Man (Standing stone) is on the other side of the Poind, not visible as you come along the track. It’s a very weathered bit of sandstone with what look like iron deposits, visible as raised veins. It’s wide face faces the Poind, from the side, the deeply eroded runnels form a jagged silhouette. The other thing that stood out, was the cleft in the bottom of the Man. It looked like the Man had been taken from the same rock as the outcrop, and that some of the weathering had taken place prior to it being stood up.

The stone looks like it’s local, as can be seen by the similarity to that of the bedrock outcrop in the same field. It seems that both the Poind and the Man have been placed purposefully in relation to the outcrop. The outcrop itself has what may be the highly eroded remains of cups. But I could see why there might be considerable doubt, but it is very soft stone, as can be seen by the erosion on the Man. The cow, rabbit and sheep crap that covers much of it didn’t help make it any easier to decide if they were solution holes or nearly gone cups. In better light, it might be easier to tell one way o the other.

The Poind is home to a number of rabbits, and the Man has Owl pellets in the grooves on the top. The spot commands a good view over towards Tyne valley to the south, and a clear view of the Simonside hills to the north. It’s easy to see why the historical record states that men were ‘set to watch’ here during the reiver years. They would have had a darn good vantage point to look for the signs of reiving activity.