Stone Henge, early morning. As close as I could get due to the gorilla – security man – guarding the entrance
I had no such trouble finding the Hurlers, with a great sign heralding its proximity and boasting its own car park. I half expected a neon sign, Vegas style, to guide me, such was the heralding!
It wasthe pity but the rain was coming down in sheets and with the occupants of the other vehicles parked up questioning my sanity, I was drenched within one minute.
I didn’t get to appreciate what must be an amazing site when the weather is fairer.
I couldn’t even get a feeling for the size or quality of the circle, the rain was so hard and clouds so oblique, it was almost as if I wasn’t welcome. I took a few stolen snaps and ran back to the car. I have unfinished business here.
I had stopped and asked for directions from Blisland and told to go up to the hamlet of Bradford, right at the phone box and follow the road toward the A30. This I did, although locating the stones was going to be trickier now I had killed the GPS and the map had gone missing. I nearly crashed trying to keep an eye on the road whilst looking along the sight line for the circle.
The rudimentary A-Z of Cornwall’s Visitor’s map I was working by listed the stones near the track but I knew it wasn’t so straightforward. I’d headed down the track towards the farm but couldn’t see anything so headed back and over toward Hawkstor. Again nothing. I spent over an hour searching, my eye led toward any stone formation, which when you’ve been up there, you’ll see is a lot.
Finally they revealed themselves, as if having grown bored with mocking me were now prepared to grant me an audience.
They were further away from the road than I had expected but I raced the 300 or so metres to the circle. What a place!
A good mile from the A30 they are located ¼ mile to the left of the road, 100 metres before you hit a cross roads. Luckily I was upwind from the main road so couldn’t hear the traffic. Just the silence of the moor.
I had to brave a herd of bison but having heard they’re vegetarian, walked past them with no incident.
I counted nine stones and a smaller central stone with a carved ‘C’. To me it looked as if they were alternate male and female stones. The beauty of this place is overwhelming and even the weather felt sorry for me and relented, the sun prying out to see what I was doing, allowing me to take some pictures in peace.
The only company were the bison and ponies and this suited me as I acquainted myself with my new friends. I was sorry to leave, I could have stayed there all afternoon.
With Roughtor bearing down on you and the wind whipping in your ears, this is a marvelous place, one of the few places in the country where you can imagine the view has pretty much stayed the same as when this circle was built.
Not far from the track, the views here are amazing. The noisy silence of the place strikes you. It is quite a moving place to be. I stayed for 20 minutes, wishing I could know more of why this circle was made.
The circle itself is made up of modestly sized stones, close together. More of a boundary for a leader’s hut than a place of worship, I’d have said. But I’m a monkey who leaves his GPS on his car roof to be run over by a lorry so what do I know?
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. I think I’d been spoilt by the sight of Men Gurta earlier in the day so I was a bit deflated to see the Magi Stone.
This must have been a very proud stone once apon a time but, alas, it now lies prostrate all on its own away from the maidens.
It was a gloomy evening it was getting quite dark so I didn’t take any photos of the stone
The Nine Maidens was marked on my Visitors to Cornwall map but, because of the gloomy evening, it took about three drive by’s and ten minutes aimless traipsing before I finally spied the Maidens at the far end of the field.
Maybe it was the evening or the light, or that I was alone but I gained a sense of uneasiness approaching the stones, almost forboding. It passed when I reached them and was snapping away.
Ironically named, the stones all seem to be male, if you go by the shaping if they were in a circle. They bear the now familiar quartz scarring and stretch some fifty metres in total alignment length.
Set at the far end from the road, there is a style for easy access about 200 metres from the layby I parked in.
Having stumbled across the Menhir, the sheep pointed me in the direction of the Barrow, located in the bottom right hand corner of the field, about 200 yards from the stone itself.
Clearly visible from the road, although it’s not the most spectacular of barrows, it’s there none the less!
The St Broeck Down’s (or ups) Menhir.
I wasn’t sure if or how we were supposed to get close and was considering cycling backto the entrance to the wind farm but at the bottom edge there was a gap in the fencing so I left FMJ with the bike and jumped over.
Like Men Gurta this stone is scarred thorugh with the distinctive quartz markings. Standing about 7ft high, there is a distinct fissure through the stone.
It reminds me a little of the Lynham Barrow Stone in Oxfordshire and I wonder if the angle of it’s erection is deliberate or if it’s down to subsidence. Both mark the locations of barrows and are at a 10 degree tilt. This is a bigger stone to the monolith at Lynham however and beautfully marked. Wonderful.
The Stone offers a myriad of textures and colours, all adding to its wonder.
This amazing monolith’s markings give it an almost reptilian quality, scarred through with quartz. Striped, it gave me the impression of a dinosaur.
Peaking over the hedgerow as you approach, It is hugely impressive the closer you get. Towering 12 ft above you, it is a wonderful sight and well worth the hike up here.
There was no rubbish either, which had been a concern reading other field notes.
The gentle swoosh of the wind turbines in the distance got me to thinking what the erectors of this masterly stone would have made of the surroundings 3000 years on.
The silence was shattered by the FMJ screaming at the site of a grass snake. I should think it was more bothered at the interuption of it’s sunbathing
Apparently witches were dragged to the site and a chain would be looped through the eye hole and the witch chained to the site and burned....