Kozmik_Ken
The next day we took an excursion to Balnakeil Beach, Church and Craft Village. An old army installation that has become an artist’s colony. There is also reputedly to be a stone circle near here, but we didn’t find it.
On the way back, driving along the Kyle of Durness, we spotted a guy at the roadside watching the sky with a pair of binoculars. Scott pulled over and we looked up to see a Golden Eagle cruising the thermals right above us. A fantastic sight. Back in the car, I took a glance at the map and noticed we were right next to a site marked as stone circles on the map. We found the site over a hillock in the field next to the road.
Dunchraigaig cairn in Kilmartin Valley
Image credit: Andy H
Kilmichael Glassary carved rock panel
Image credit: Andy H
The next day we took an excursion to Balnakeil Beach, Church and Craft Village. An old army installation that has become an artist’s colony. There is also reputedly to be a stone circle near here, but we didn’t find it.
On the way back, driving along the Kyle of Durness, we spotted a guy at the roadside watching the sky with a pair of binoculars. Scott pulled over and we looked up to see a Golden Eagle cruising the thermals right above us. A fantastic sight. Back in the car, I took a glance at the map and noticed we were right next to a site marked as stone circles on the map. We found the site over a hillock in the field next to the road.
Know locally as The Ord, the site’s entrance appears to be through the remains of three ditches which enclose an area containing groups of stones and a low rubble wall at the rear. The stones appear to be too closely set together to be true stone circles and areas of spoil again seem very small to be the remains of collapsed cairns. I guess their likeliest purpose is hut circles in a settlement site. There is also a low circular, stone enclosure a few yards away, which looks more like a modern sheep pen than anything ancient.
Noting on the map that ancient places were nearby, we headed into the hills. First of all finding a cairn. Nothing spectacular, but the views were magnificent. Occasionally, a window would open in the low cloud and offer us spectacular views onto the loch below, or over to the Kyle of Durness. It felt like we were in the seat of the gods.
We headed off across the blasted plateau in search of a Pictish Wheelhouse marked on the OS map. After much crossing of streams (during which Shaun performed the most spectacular of salmon leaps across a burn to land in a crumple heap half in, half out of the water) and upping and downing, we spied an outcrop. Scott reached the top first and let a loud whoop! Upon reaching the top we found ourselves looking down onto the most perfectly preserved wheelhouse I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if it has been restored at any time, I suspect not. The whole thing seems too jumbled to be reconstructed.
Village website including a brief history of area
A description of all aspects and history of Smoo Cave
The wonderfully preserved Pictish Wheelhouse in the hills above Laid, nr Durness, Sutherland
Image credit: Andy H
The wonderfully preserved Pictish Wheelhouse in the hills above Laid, nr Durness, Sutherland
Image credit: Andy H
The wonderfully preserved Pictish Wheelhouse in the hills above Laid, nr Durness, Sutherland
Image credit: Andy H
The Ord settlement site and Hut Circles overlooving the Kyle of Durness in Sutherland
Image credit: Andy H
The Ord settlement site and Hut Circles overlooving the Kyle of Durness in Sutherland
Image credit: Andy H
The Ord settlement site and Hut Circles overlooving the Kyle of Durness in Sutherland
Image credit: Andy H
This is a log of visits to various sites from a number of Ambient Rambles over the years, with a number of people. Mostly around the Yorkshire Dales and the Scottish Highlands.
The Witch’s Pool and Glen Elg Brocks
On a trip into the Highlands with Scott and Shaun in May 1998, we’d stayed with a guy called Geordie who was building his own house near Drumnadrochit, overlooking Loch Ness and were now making our way over west for a couple of nights in the Bothy at Glen Torridon.
Near Loch Arkaig we came across a waterfall near an old bridge, down what is known as the ‘Dark Mile’ that seemed like an ideal place to have a poke around. Shaun and I climbed the path at the side of the waterfall and found a wonderful spot at the top. The hillside stream enters a natural rock basin where the water bubbles and boils as if in a deep green cauldron. The water then tumbles over a short ledge and on to a big waterfall into the pool below. The rock around the basin has an amazing swirly, almost psychedelic stratification. Not a megalithic site as such, but I can’t imagine that this place went unnoticed and it must have had some pretty powerful associations in pre-history.
The folklore of the site tells that it got it’s name after the Camerons once chased a witch, in the form of a cat, over these falls to her death. But I suspect that the name originates from the time of Christianisation of Scotland and reflects it’s older pagan associations.
Carrying on northwards we took a diversion over Bealach Mam Ratagan with it’s stunning views over the Five Sisters of Kintail, down into Glen Elg. Near the old Red Coat Barracks and the ferry to Skye are two magnificently preserved Iron Age Brocks, Dun Telve and further down the glen, Dun Troddan.
Both brochs retain about a half of their walls up to about 25ft high and many of the steps and galleries within the walls. Dun Telve still has its entrance intact, which is pretty megalithic looking. They must have been pretty forbidding when they were complete and inhabited with people defending it!
Clava Cairns
Later the same year I returned to Geordie’s, this time with my old friend Carol and her two young lads. Before we made our way over to Glen Torridon, we went for an Ambient Ramble around Loch Ness. After appeasing the young ‘uns with a visit to Urquhart Castle (nice loch, nice ruins, but clipped and pruned to death and crawling with punters) we headed out to more remote areas to seek out the local pre-history.
Trundling along we spotted signs for Corrimony Cairn in Glen Urquhart. A beautiful example of a Clava type cairn with a surrounding stone circle. When excavated in the 1950’s, many of the stones were found to be replacements and the outline of a crouched burial was found. There is also a cup marked slab which may have been part of the cist cover.
Onwards over to the eastern side of Loch Ness for a trundle over the higher moors. Skirting the edge of a plantation near Inverness, I spied a very obvious standing stone in the field. Gask is a Ring Cairn with most of the kerbstones still intact. Three standing stones remain from it’s circle, the largest being the one I had seen from the road, which is a massive flat slab about three meters high and the same wide. I liked this site as it hadn’t been trimmed or prettied up for visitors at all.
Next stop, the Balnuaran of Clava. Three of the many cairns in this area, situated in a wooded glade, with attendant stone circles. A beautiful spot, but we didn’t get long here as a coach-full of huge American tourists turned up and began to squeeze through the entrance, shattering the ambience of the place (I’ve never seen so much hardware in my life – video cameras, dicta-phones.... bet the BBC aren’t as well equipped as this lot!).
Also worth a visit just around the corner (while your there) is the Culloden Battlefield. Again, not a prehistoric site, but interesting non-the-less to see where it all came to an end. A very poignant place.
Ilkley Moor
Managed to fit a couple of trips onto the moor in with a couple of Ambient Rambles around the Dales, staying with friends at the study centre on Malham Tarn. The first being in Autumn 2000, my first time back on the moor for nine years, with a quick stomp up to the Twelve Apostles. I was disappointed to find that a couple of stones had fallen since my last visit. A thin pointed stone at the north eastern point of the circle that had leaned perilously a few years ago, had now completely fallen and lays partially embedded on the ground. Also, a low, flat stone that had stood on it’s longest edge had fallen and been re-erected nearby on it’s short edge. Many of the stones that had lain loose had been propped up with small rocks.
Upon leaving the circle and making our way back down the boardwalk, a plane circling Leeds/Bradford Airport skimmed low over the top of the moor and turned up into sky above us. Quite a sight!!
We returned to the dales the next spring, this time with Shaun along too, and fitted a day on Ilkley Moor in. I did my usual route over the moor – Cow n’ Calf, Haystack, Backstone Beck, Twelve Apostles, The Grubstones, Little Skirtfull, Idol Stone and the Pancake Stone.
While we approached the Grubstones, I notice some folk on a quadbike tearing up n’ down the moor. “Rich kids from Ilkley” I thought at first. We reached the gamekeeper’s hut and found the small path through the heather down to the Grubstones. No sooner had we reached the circle than I saw the quadbike twatting across the heather towards us. It was the flaming Gamekeeper!
“What you doin’ here” he shouted at us.
“Just looking at the circle mate” I replied.
“Keep t’fooking path. You’re disturbing the grouse”.
I pointed out that we’d quietly walked down a path disturbing nothing, whilst he’d just torn up about 20 yards of open heather with his four big wheels.... it didn’t go down well.
“If it were up to me I wouldn’t let no fookin’ c*nt up here”
“Good job it isn’t then!.... hang on a minute, you’ve just called us f*cking c*nts!”
And so it carried on until we walked off n’ left him to it. He got back on his bike with his two square-headed kids and rode off to find someone else to take a pop at. Sure enough, he was back ten minutes later to see if he could catch us in the circle! He became the winner of our first ‘Ambient Rambler’s Monumental Twat of the Week Award’!
So a word of warning to those who like to frequent Ikley Moor... if you see someone on a quadbike, avoid him n’ wait for him to sod off before you wander off the path.
Appletreewick
A bit of a flying visit this one as we were passing through Grassington. A hop over a rickety old dry-stone wall, scamper uphill a while and a bit of a search over scrubby, boulder strewn ground. A very small, low circle, not obvious until you’re right on top of it.... lots of sheep shit too.
Image credit: Andy H
This is a log of visits to various sites from a number of Ambient Rambles over the years, with a number of people. Mostly around the Yorkshire Dales and the Scottish Highlands.
The Witch’s Pool and Glen Elg Brocks
On a trip into the Highlands with Scott and Shaun in May 1998, we’d stayed with a guy called Geordie who was building his own house near Drumnadrochit, overlooking Loch Ness and were now making our way over west for a couple of nights in the Bothy at Glen Torridon.
Near Loch Arkaig we came across a waterfall near an old bridge, down what is known as the ‘Dark Mile’ that seemed like an ideal place to have a poke around. Shaun and I climbed the path at the side of the waterfall and found a wonderful spot at the top. The hillside stream enters a natural rock basin where the water bubbles and boils as if in a deep green cauldron. The water then tumbles over a short ledge and on to a big waterfall into the pool below. The rock around the basin has an amazing swirly, almost psychedelic stratification. Not a megalithic site as such, but I can’t imagine that this place went unnoticed and it must have had some pretty powerful associations in pre-history.
The folklore of the site tells that it got it’s name after the Camerons once chased a witch, in the form of a cat, over these falls to her death. But I suspect that the name originates from the time of Christianisation of Scotland and reflects it’s older pagan associations.
Carrying on northwards we took a diversion over Bealach Mam Ratagan with it’s stunning views over the Five Sisters of Kintail, down into Glen Elg. Near the old Red Coat Barracks and the ferry to Skye are two magnificently preserved Iron Age Brocks, Dun Telve and further down the glen, Dun Troddan.
Both brochs retain about a half of their walls up to about 25ft high and many of the steps and galleries within the walls. Dun Telve still has its entrance intact, which is pretty megalithic looking. They must have been pretty forbidding when they were complete and inhabited with people defending it!
Clava Cairns
Later the same year I returned to Geordie’s, this time with my old friend Carol and her two young lads. Before we made our way over to Glen Torridon, we went for an Ambient Ramble around Loch Ness. After appeasing the young ‘uns with a visit to Urquhart Castle (nice loch, nice ruins, but clipped and pruned to death and crawling with punters) we headed out to more remote areas to seek out the local pre-history.
Trundling along we spotted signs for Corrimony Cairn in Glen Urquhart. A beautiful example of a Clava type cairn with a surrounding stone circle. When excavated in the 1950’s, many of the stones were found to be replacements and the outline of a crouched burial was found. There is also a cup marked slab which may have been part of the cist cover.
Onwards over to the eastern side of Loch Ness for a trundle over the higher moors. Skirting the edge of a plantation near Inverness, I spied a very obvious standing stone in the field. Gask is a Ring Cairn with most of the kerbstones still intact. Three standing stones remain from it’s circle, the largest being the one I had seen from the road, which is a massive flat slab about three meters high and the same wide. I liked this site as it hadn’t been trimmed or prettied up for visitors at all.
Next stop, the Balnuaran of Clava. Three of the many cairns in this area, situated in a wooded glade, with attendant stone circles. A beautiful spot, but we didn’t get long here as a coach-full of huge American tourists turned up and began to squeeze through the entrance, shattering the ambience of the place (I’ve never seen so much hardware in my life – video cameras, dicta-phones.... bet the BBC aren’t as well equipped as this lot!).
Also worth a visit just around the corner (while your there) is the Culloden Battlefield. Again, not a prehistoric site, but interesting non-the-less to see where it all came to an end. A very poignant place.
Ilkley Moor
Managed to fit a couple of trips onto the moor in with a couple of Ambient Rambles around the Dales, staying with friends at the study centre on Malham Tarn. The first being in Autumn 2000, my first time back on the moor for nine years, with a quick stomp up to the Twelve Apostles. I was disappointed to find that a couple of stones had fallen since my last visit. A thin pointed stone at the north eastern point of the circle that had leaned perilously a few years ago, had now completely fallen and lays partially embedded on the ground. Also, a low, flat stone that had stood on it’s longest edge had fallen and been re-erected nearby on it’s short edge. Many of the stones that had lain loose had been propped up with small rocks.
Upon leaving the circle and making our way back down the boardwalk, a plane circling Leeds/Bradford Airport skimmed low over the top of the moor and turned up into sky above us. Quite a sight!!
We returned to the dales the next spring, this time with Shaun along too, and fitted a day on Ilkley Moor in. I did my usual route over the moor – Cow n’ Calf, Haystack, Backstone Beck, Twelve Apostles, The Grubstones, Little Skirtfull, Idol Stone and the Pancake Stone.
While we approached the Grubstones, I notice some folk on a quadbike tearing up n’ down the moor. “Rich kids from Ilkley” I thought at first. We reached the gamekeeper’s hut and found the small path through the heather down to the Grubstones. No sooner had we reached the circle than I saw the quadbike twatting across the heather towards us. It was the flaming Gamekeeper!
“What you doin’ here” he shouted at us.
“Just looking at the circle mate” I replied.
“Keep t’fooking path. You’re disturbing the grouse”.
I pointed out that we’d quietly walked down a path disturbing nothing, whilst he’d just torn up about 20 yards of open heather with his four big wheels.... it didn’t go down well.
“If it were up to me I wouldn’t let no fookin’ c*nt up here”
“Good job it isn’t then!.... hang on a minute, you’ve just called us f*cking c*nts!”
And so it carried on until we walked off n’ left him to it. He got back on his bike with his two square-headed kids and rode off to find someone else to take a pop at. Sure enough, he was back ten minutes later to see if he could catch us in the circle! He became the winner of our first ‘Ambient Rambler’s Monumental Twat of the Week Award’!
So a word of warning to those who like to frequent Ikley Moor... if you see someone on a quadbike, avoid him n’ wait for him to sod off before you wander off the path.
Appletreewick
A bit of a flying visit this one as we were passing through Grassington. A hop over a rickety old dry-stone wall, scamper uphill a while and a bit of a search over scrubby, boulder strewn ground. A very small, low circle, not obvious until you’re right on top of it.... lots of sheep shit too.
Image credit: Andy H
This is a log of visits to various sites from a number of Ambient Rambles over the years, with a number of people. Mostly around the Yorkshire Dales and the Scottish Highlands.
The Witch’s Pool and Glen Elg Brocks
On a trip into the Highlands with Scott and Shaun in May 1998, we’d stayed with a guy called Geordie who was building his own house near Drumnadrochit, overlooking Loch Ness and were now making our way over west for a couple of nights in the Bothy at Glen Torridon.
Near Loch Arkaig we came across a waterfall near an old bridge, down what is known as the ‘Dark Mile’ that seemed like an ideal place to have a poke around. Shaun and I climbed the path at the side of the waterfall and found a wonderful spot at the top. The hillside stream enters a natural rock basin where the water bubbles and boils as if in a deep green cauldron. The water then tumbles over a short ledge and on to a big waterfall into the pool below. The rock around the basin has an amazing swirly, almost psychedelic stratification. Not a megalithic site as such, but I can’t imagine that this place went unnoticed and it must have had some pretty powerful associations in pre-history.
The folklore of the site tells that it got it’s name after the Camerons once chased a witch, in the form of a cat, over these falls to her death. But I suspect that the name originates from the time of Christianisation of Scotland and reflects it’s older pagan associations.
Carrying on northwards we took a diversion over Bealach Mam Ratagan with it’s stunning views over the Five Sisters of Kintail, down into Glen Elg. Near the old Red Coat Barracks and the ferry to Skye are two magnificently preserved Iron Age Brocks, Dun Telve and further down the glen, Dun Troddan.
Both brochs retain about a half of their walls up to about 25ft high and many of the steps and galleries within the walls. Dun Telve still has its entrance intact, which is pretty megalithic looking. They must have been pretty forbidding when they were complete and inhabited with people defending it!
Clava Cairns
Later the same year I returned to Geordie’s, this time with my old friend Carol and her two young lads. Before we made our way over to Glen Torridon, we went for an Ambient Ramble around Loch Ness. After appeasing the young ‘uns with a visit to Urquhart Castle (nice loch, nice ruins, but clipped and pruned to death and crawling with punters) we headed out to more remote areas to seek out the local pre-history.
Trundling along we spotted signs for Corrimony Cairn in Glen Urquhart. A beautiful example of a Clava type cairn with a surrounding stone circle. When excavated in the 1950’s, many of the stones were found to be replacements and the outline of a crouched burial was found. There is also a cup marked slab which may have been part of the cist cover.
Onwards over to the eastern side of Loch Ness for a trundle over the higher moors. Skirting the edge of a plantation near Inverness, I spied a very obvious standing stone in the field. Gask is a Ring Cairn with most of the kerbstones still intact. Three standing stones remain from it’s circle, the largest being the one I had seen from the road, which is a massive flat slab about three meters high and the same wide. I liked this site as it hadn’t been trimmed or prettied up for visitors at all.
Next stop, the Balnuaran of Clava. Three of the many cairns in this area, situated in a wooded glade, with attendant stone circles. A beautiful spot, but we didn’t get long here as a coach-full of huge American tourists turned up and began to squeeze through the entrance, shattering the ambience of the place (I’ve never seen so much hardware in my life – video cameras, dicta-phones.... bet the BBC aren’t as well equipped as this lot!).
Also worth a visit just around the corner (while your there) is the Culloden Battlefield. Again, not a prehistoric site, but interesting non-the-less to see where it all came to an end. A very poignant place.
Ilkley Moor
Managed to fit a couple of trips onto the moor in with a couple of Ambient Rambles around the Dales, staying with friends at the study centre on Malham Tarn. The first being in Autumn 2000, my first time back on the moor for nine years, with a quick stomp up to the Twelve Apostles. I was disappointed to find that a couple of stones had fallen since my last visit. A thin pointed stone at the north eastern point of the circle that had leaned perilously a few years ago, had now completely fallen and lays partially embedded on the ground. Also, a low, flat stone that had stood on it’s longest edge had fallen and been re-erected nearby on it’s short edge. Many of the stones that had lain loose had been propped up with small rocks.
Upon leaving the circle and making our way back down the boardwalk, a plane circling Leeds/Bradford Airport skimmed low over the top of the moor and turned up into sky above us. Quite a sight!!
We returned to the dales the next spring, this time with Shaun along too, and fitted a day on Ilkley Moor in. I did my usual route over the moor – Cow n’ Calf, Haystack, Backstone Beck, Twelve Apostles, The Grubstones, Little Skirtfull, Idol Stone and the Pancake Stone.
While we approached the Grubstones, I notice some folk on a quadbike tearing up n’ down the moor. “Rich kids from Ilkley” I thought at first. We reached the gamekeeper’s hut and found the small path through the heather down to the Grubstones. No sooner had we reached the circle than I saw the quadbike twatting across the heather towards us. It was the flaming Gamekeeper!
“What you doin’ here” he shouted at us.
“Just looking at the circle mate” I replied.
“Keep t’fooking path. You’re disturbing the grouse”.
I pointed out that we’d quietly walked down a path disturbing nothing, whilst he’d just torn up about 20 yards of open heather with his four big wheels.... it didn’t go down well.
“If it were up to me I wouldn’t let no fookin’ c*nt up here”
“Good job it isn’t then!.... hang on a minute, you’ve just called us f*cking c*nts!”
And so it carried on until we walked off n’ left him to it. He got back on his bike with his two square-headed kids and rode off to find someone else to take a pop at. Sure enough, he was back ten minutes later to see if he could catch us in the circle! He became the winner of our first ‘Ambient Rambler’s Monumental Twat of the Week Award’!
So a word of warning to those who like to frequent Ikley Moor... if you see someone on a quadbike, avoid him n’ wait for him to sod off before you wander off the path.
Appletreewick
A bit of a flying visit this one as we were passing through Grassington. A hop over a rickety old dry-stone wall, scamper uphill a while and a bit of a search over scrubby, boulder strewn ground. A very small, low circle, not obvious until you’re right on top of it.... lots of sheep shit too.
Image credit: Andy H
I grew up in sight of this old hillfort from my bedroom window in Crosland Moor.
The history of the site is that it was first occupied during the Bronze Age. It later became an Iron Age Hillfort when much of the earthworks were dug out. The site was suddenly abandoned after an explosion caused by internal combustion in one of the walls, about 400BC . Excavations found vitrification amongst the stonework in part of the walls (this could be the source of the local legend about it being a worm’s lair).
The hill laid abandoned until after the Norman invasion (despite popular belief that the Romans occupied the hill. No evidence has been found to support this) when the De Lacy family built a castle and re-dug and extended the earthworks. It is reported that the castle was still fairly intact (although ruinous) in the 16th Century, but the site was used as a quarry until no stonework remains above ground.
The pub was built in 1812 and it is said that a tunnel was found that led down into the hill. Alas, no one was brave enough to explore it and it was sealed up when the pub was built on top of it. There are a number of local legends about tunnels leading out from the hill. The pub used to be good for lock-ins, and a few of us used to see in the solstice sunrise up there in the 1980’s... but it’s been taken over by a chain now and tries to attract the carvery crowd. You even get your beer on a ****ing serviette!!!
The tower was built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Silver Jubilee.
Andy H
Try the approach from Hangingstones Road. If you’re in a car, you can park by the Cow & Calf Rocks... if not, it’s a bit of a hike from Ilkley Train Station, and the edge of the moor is very steep, but this route takes you through the amazing prehistoric landscape of Green Crag Slack and Backstone Beck.
Once on the moor, to the west of the Cow & Calf are the Hangingstones – an outcrop down by the Victorian Quarry. This flat outcrop features some of the strangest variations on cup and ring marks you’ll find anywhere.... and an amazing view over Wharfedale.
From the Cow & Calf continue straight forward and up the ridge in front of you. This takes you onto Green Crag Slack where there are hundreds of Cup and Ring marked rocks. The Pancake Stone (that can be seen balancing over the edge of the moor), The Haystack Rock and the Planets all lie along this ridge. The path to the South West takes you to the Idol Stone, Green Crag and the Woofa Bank Cairnfield. To the South East, the path curves round to the Backstone Beck enclosure (a Neolithic & Bronze Age walled settlement area containing a couple of well designed rock carvings).
Continue along the path to the south, up onto the next ridge and bear right until the path joins the boardwalk up to the Twelve Apostles.
Here, break off the main path and follow the small path that leads from the eastern edge of the circle towards an obvious outcrop about 1000 yards away. Here you will find the Grubstones circle (a small circle likely to be the kerbstones of a robbed cairn) in the heather about 10/20 yards south of the gamekeeper’s hut. Watch for the gamekeeper tho’... he’s an arse. You’ll spot him on his quadbike if he’s around!
You can then head back to Ilkley by taking the path around the resevoir dyke, over Lanshaw Delves and Green Crag and back down to the Haystack Rock (look out for the Little Skirtfull of Stones Cairn and the Idol Stone on the way.
Andy H
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