winterjc

October 2002.

Visited here with my 2 oldest friends Norie of the photos and George. We didn’t tell George where we were going – but anyway.

Asked permission from the old couple at Crofthead Farm and went to the stones.

The higher up, north pair of standing stones sit quietly at the side of a stream. I read on the Ancient Scotland website that the tip of the tallest of these two stones may mirror a distant peak in the Lomond Hills on the Southern horizon above the Keillour Forest.

A hundred yards to the south, down the hill are two large boulder type stones which may be the remains of one stone which has been split.

The megalithic culture remained strong in this area – you can visit a giant pictish carved stone inside the church in the village – there is also a full sized replica of this stone which stands in the village.

We headed out towards Perth.

We parked and asked permission at Dalchilra farm.

The stones sit low on the Machany Water Valley downstream from the Dunruchan Hill stones.

The solitary north-western stone stands proud about 12 feet from the level of the field although it’s hard to judge it’s true size as it looks as if it may be propped up by the pile of stones which surround it. This looks as if it might be a re-erection job although it’s hard to say. If this is the original state of the monument then it’s pretty unusual.

The two other stones sit in a nearby field to the south-east.
The larger of the two stones has weathered cup markings on it’s east face near to the base of the stone.

8/6/02

We walked from the village car park, over the disused railway bridge over the Dochart and then into the estate. We got permission at the house and cautiously walked passed the cows and calves.

The sun was hot but the field the ground was heavy as it had been raining heavily the previous day.

What a place though. It’s such a well preserved, compact little circle. The River, just a few hundred yards to the west of the circle, flows northwards towards Loch Tay.

I sat down in the middle of the circle and heard kids playing by the house, the peacock and a chainsaw up in the woods above the field with the rocky, Sron a Chlachain looking down from the west.

I visited this site with an old friend who was doing the driving. We spent the best part of an hour driving around housing schemes in the rain and would never have found the stone without the directions of some helpful locals (should have checked out Martin’s directions properly before setting out).

We found the stone standing, still proud at the side of the street – and what a presence it has!

And then you go round the back and there, along with some cup markings, is the paint. I dont know what cup markings are all about and I don’t know what function graffitti serves – given the absence of young male passage and identity rituals in our small, small world, maybe it’s the same!? And then again......

It could do with being cleaned up though.

Big mistake.

Myself and Norie visited this place during lambing season during post-foot and mouth paranoia. Norie’s brother Robert, who can’t walk too well, chose to sit in the car.

The lambs weren’t bothered, in fact they kept wandering up to us with their families and bleating – loads of them – and that noise can be a bit scary. It bypasses all defences and goes straight to the soul.

We got to the stones eventually after some map confusion (see miscellanious section).

This is a sad remains and was surely something more grand before the farmers got thier hands on it. There are now 3 main stones which seem to have been dumped a couple of hundred metres away from the original stone circle site. However, it still sits in a beautiful place near the south bank of the Teith a few hundred metres south of the Auld Knowe. The Auld Knowe is a natural and no doubt sacred hillock which has iron age remains.

We climbed the knowe and enjoyed the view whilst having a smoke.

Then on the road below a pick up truck stopped and the guy driving started shouting at us from the bottom of his bastard soul about the lambs and how we should not be there. I thought he was going to kill us and we walked towards him, I was thinking “we come in peace” and Norie was muttering about how there were no signs up and how there are no tresspass laws in Scotland. With no solicitors present, try telling that to a rosy cheeked farming psycho! I feared a messy confrontation. It didn’t happen though and the guy drove off still calling us all the bastards of the day.

Yup, we shouldn’t have gone there and I’ll maybe seek permission the next time I go into farmland. This was a couple of months ago now and those cute wee curious lambs are probably lying in bits in the refridgeration section in a supermarket somewhere far away (£6.00 per kilo).

With that in mind and with me being aware of my own bouts of greed, I think I now understand the anger.

We drove to Callander and chilled out with a couple of Guinness.

This stone sits about 600 metres directly to the north of the stone row. It sits right at the edge of a wood just east of Glenhead farm. The stone is over 7 feet high and about the same wide and has a broad, strong presence. The stone looks to have patches of very fragile, light coloured quartz and has very weathered cup markings on its eastern face.

There is a rusty old metal fence post which has been driven into the stone and secured with what looks like concrete.

It is not in alignment with the stone row and it’s now hard to tell if it would have been visible from the stone row.

The monument sits in a field between Doune and Dunblane and are just visible from the B824.

There are three (*possibly four stones) in a clear NNE – SSW alignment. There are good views to both horizons along the alignment. The southernmost stone sits at an angle and would have been around 7 or 8 feet high when upright. The middle stone is about 4 and a half feet and is short and stubby with nearly 30 cup markings on it’s flat surface. The north stone is also at an angle and would have been about 6 feet high.
*There is another stone which lies prostrate, to the immediate north of the alignment. If this was a seperate standing stone, the way it looks to have fallen suggests that it was not in alignment with the rest. Of course this stone may have been moved. It is generally thought that the prostrate stone is actually a broken piece of the northern most standing stone which it lies beside.

The stones are set in gently undulating countryside about a mile north of the River Teith carselands.
There are good views of the Gargunnock and Touch Hills to the south and the Ochils to the east and the mountains around Callander to the north west. When we visited Ben Ledi to the north west was snow capped and looked fierce and volcanic, like Mount Fuji.
Dumyat to the south west of the Ochils also looked prominent.

There was a strange modern stone sculpture being erected at the entrance to the field. There was also loads of building materials which suggested someone was building a house with the stone sculpture as a centrepiece – will check this out at a later date.

There was freezing wind and we left to find the other stone near Glenhead farm.

I spent the walk from Gleneagles railway station moaning about golfers, golf courses, enormous houses, the lack of pavements, the unfair distribution of wealth, blah blah blah.....and the kids rightly had other things to think about and enjoyed the walk.

The monument sits right on the junction of Easthill Road and Tullibardine Road on the outskirts of Auchterarder. There are three standing stones, one in the middle of the junction and two on an embankment opposite.

This isn’t a relaxing place – it’s a bit like the Leys of Marlee in the sense that you’re always on the look out for the next Range Rover to come flying round the corner. I took the photos quickly and we didn’t hang around as the kids wanted to go to the pub in Auchterarder.

There was snow on the hills at the other side of Strathearn to the distant North.

The roads dont look new and there were roadworks present at the junction when we visited – here’s hoping that the stones are treated with more sympathy than they have been in the past.

16/02/02

I visited this site with no real idea of the scale of the place. Auchenlaich is the longest megalithic burial cairn in Britain.

Today, Auchenlaich Cairn consists of a ridge of grassed over stones which stretches for over 350 metres in a perfectly straight line, from a field adjacent to the Auchenlaich camping site and well into another field to the north. A farm track cuts right across the middle of the cairn. Auchenlaich runs in a NNW to SSE direction and sits in the flat valley of the Keltie Water, less than a mile east of the town of Callander.
The highlands rise from the central lowlands immediately to the north and west , with the mighty presence of Ben Ledi just a few miles to the west.

There is one burial chamber opened in the south section of the monument and there are also small piles of what looks like recently excavated stones along the south section.
It’s hard to take in the sheer size of this place and almost as hard to get a good photo – the place is crying out to be photographed from the air.

There must have been so many burials and possibly cremations here, that a walk along this 350 metres must have been a linear journey of legend, pain and joy of life – a life shared with the spirits.

8/02/02
I’ve been here before, sometimes just sitting in the parked car in the rain. I came here this morning, walking from the town of Denny 2 miles to the west. It was a bit overcast, but so warm, and you could smell the soil and the grass for the first time this year. It felt like the first day of spring and my serotonin was doing it’s feel good best.
The smaller, less conical hill is fenced off, and I left it there as there were cemetery workers keeping a suspicious eye on me. I walked around the larger more formed hill to the SE and took it in from all angles. What a site!
It’s over 20metres high and 60 metres diameter at the base and has steep sides and a flattish top.
I climbed on top of the larger hill and watched the maturing Carron flow east and listened to the rushing of the motorway behind me. Despite all the pylons, the M-way and b-roads there is something very special and calming about sitting up on the flattened summit. I sat for ages until a funeral procession arrived in the modern cemetery below me, and at that I left.
I crossed the bridge and walked down the south side of the Carron for a few hundred yards to try and figure where the old ford was. I found an old industrial wier, so I gave up on the ford.
Walking on to Larbert on the B905 I turned back and realised that this was the direction I should have travelled from. Coming from Larbert on this road, you turn a corner and the valley floor opens up before you with the SE hill resting magically and with prominence, like a small Silbury.

Visited here in 2000 when a friend was working at nearby Roddenlaw. I’m sure I’d seen this stone before that day – from the train maybe??

Came here with Martin and Norie in late 2000. After walking through the woods past Dumgoyach Hill, we sat and watched the comings and goings of a gardener at Duntreath Castle and the ramblers at the summit of Dumgoyne Hill, through the binoculars. This alignment (of which only one stone remains standing)is set on top of a shallow raise in the green Strathblane, between the Kilpatrick Hills to the west and the Campsies to the east. I didn’t feel at all well that day, but typically did not tell anyone.

We went on a family holiday in about 1978 or ‘79 in Tulliallan, near Drogheda, and during the holiday we visited Newgrange.
I remember thinking that day that the surrounding wall looked a bit like the Battle of Bannockburn memorial rotunda which is an odd modernist, 60’s stylised thing which is a few hundred yards from where we lived at the time.
I definitely remember squatting down with my Dad who was trying to explain something about the sunlight coming through a passage on a certain special day.
I want to come back here and try to see past all the touristy stuff.

At the other side of the man-made Loch Airthrey from the Airthrey Stone (about 800m W of it) stands the Pathfoot Stone.
This 11 ft giant sits on top of an embankment at the side of Hermitage Road close to the Stirling University student blocks. When you stand at the bottom of the embankment, the stone imposes itself over you with trees behind it. It really has a huge presence.
Despite it being a bit patched up with concrete and the surrounding university building and landscaping(see misc.), its a great place to just come, sit, chill out, people watch and have your lunch, as I’ve done a few times before.

I’ve been up here once before , in November 2000. I walked up through the old copper mine wood from Bridge of Allan. The old copper mines possibly made this whole place a place of added power during the bronze age.

The cairn sits at the edge green 11 of the Bridge of Allan golf course. It is a lot smaller than it used to be according to Faechem’s Prehistoric Scotland – a lot of the stones were removed for the usual dyke building. I think there were some goodies found by the victorian robbers, although I’ll update this when I get Faechem’s book from the library again.

The view sitting on the cairn is amazing – the hills rise up slowly from the other side of Strathallan and then further away to the NW the higher highland mountains are THERE. The Forth Valley and Stirling town are spread out down to the west.

I made my way back down to Bridge of Allan, following the old cattle droving road.

I’ll be back here with a camera.

03/02/02 And back I came. Well worth the climb from Bridge of Allan.

I first saw this stone when I was still at school and used to hang around here with a friend who lived nearby.
This sturdy, giant, 12 foot stone stands in the centre of the small county town of Clackmannan.
The stone almost certainly doesn’t sit in the original landscape but has been revered in history and folklore throughout different ages and now is a symbol of the fierce independance of the old county of Clackmannanshire.
You wont usually find this a particularly serene place, but it is worth the visit, if for no other reason, than to check out the extraordinary phallic nature of this monument – the main part of the stone is at a slight angle and has a large and seperate boulder sitting on top.
It’s an absolute rager, sitting right in the middle of this traditional and sleepy looking Scottish town centre.

-In memory of Dixie and Jeanette-
This stone sits in a field just off the main Alloa to Kincardine road. Comely bank is the raised glacial beach between Alloa and Clackmannan, which overlooks the carselands of the Forth Valley to the south with a sweeping view of the [Ochil] Hillfoots to the north.
The stone is a striking slab, which leans at a slight angle, and when you see it from the main road it’s 9ft sits on the horizon.
The only feature which gets mentioned is a cross which has been carved onto one side. If the intention of the christian carver[s] were to take mystery and power away from this stone, then it has worked in the sense that it is pretty much ignored nowadays (this of course, could also be a good thing in a way) as the carving makes the stone very unusual and difficult for the historians to fit it easily into any one culture – it just seems to throw everyone. The cross is pretty crude and certainly less intricate than the usual pictish/celtic stones (as has been the suggested origin of the stone) and looks pretty much like a paranoid and rushed christianisation of a previously revered and ancient thing. For these reasons, it seems, no-one wants to claim or talk about this stone. It doesn’t even really have a name.
I first visited this site 5 years ago at 2 in the morning with Norie (of the photos) and 2 other night travellers Dixie and the sober Jeanette. Dixie was enthusiastic about this site, had (proffesionally) photographed it several times and that night offered to be our guide while the ever patient and benevolent landlady, Jeannette taxied us there. The guys waded through, what we christened mad grass, a thick stalky crop which took forever to get through, while Jeannete waited with the engine running. We got there eventually (although it should be easier to visit now as the field is more accessable now and folk will of course be more responsible and clearer of mind than we were).
Despite all the confusion, this stone is worth the visiting.
This stone, like Hully Hill, now has it’s own nearby MacDonalds for spiritual and bodily nourishment.

We visited this site in Feb. 2000. We just wandered around this valley floor all day – you need loads of time for all the jewels that the people left us here. The great X is one of them. We wandered and wondered round this unique monument.
The overall alignment of this whole monument is approximately the same as the cairn cemetry, the valley and the river. I cant say any more – it’s like much of this valley – a beautiful mystery.

The 2 circles here, sit high on moorland on the Braes of Fowlis above the hamlet of Fowlis Wester.
We headed for a strange looking dark, brick ruin and found the circles.
The stones in both circles have either fallen/pushed or were originally boulder like, but the circles remain obvious and tight. The 9 stoned eastern circle, once had 12 stones and has a rocked cairn mound in the centre.
There is also an outlying monolith close to the circles, which stands upright and strong, contrasting with the low lying circles.
According to the Ancient Scotland website (see links) Aubrey Burl visited this area and wasn’t too impressed – the writer suggested our Aub was having a bad day.
It is a strange site. The only thing you see on approach is the monolith and you only get the whole site when it is under your nose.
I felt it was well worth coming here, and we wanted to hang about longer, but the sun was down and I was probably hungry.

This intriguing site sits in a large grassed field, between the A985 on the north and a freight railway to the south. The Tuilyies stone is visible from the main road, just west of the Torryburn roundabout.
From the site, the Firth of Forth is visible through the trees near the railway to the south.
The site consists of the main standing stone, (an 8ft., stunning, worn and cup marked thing, which sits in the field like an old flipper, or praying hands), and three smaller and less weathered boulders which sit in the field nearby.
Myself and a freind visited this site in late 1999 and hung about for a while. I took a walk around the large field to see if there were any other surprises. There is what looks like an old WW2 defensive brick built thing nearby and funny, but recent looking earthworks. There were a couple of faint undulations in the field which made me wonder.
Probably the River Forth estuary (which is about a mile away) and possibly Cairnpapple (about 10 miles to the south, on the other side of the river) were important to this place. I forgot to check the Cairnpapple thing out – I’ll make a poiint of this the next time I’m passing.

Feb.2000
We almost made it.
We parked the car near the gate to the field. We squelched our way through the mud and then stopped!
There was 3 or 4 big black bulls surrounding the cairn in the middle of the field and they were staring at us.
And being townies we turned back quickstyle.
Another day?

Feb. 2000
It had been raining heavily earlier in the day and slipped on the mud and I dropped my camera into a deep pool in the rocks.
Darn that Ver.
To be honest I love the rain.
Bill Clinton said at Wimbledon that it was what makes our islands so green. And how often do we moan about it.
Bill was probably reconnecting with his ancestral roots when he talked of the pishing rain – he doesn’t live here now of course, and he doesn’t need encouragment in root connection.
JC’s theory of sacred water collection on these horizontal sheets, is so simple, and makes sense in these damp islands. Of course, the neolithic folk of Britain knew well that the rain was a lifegiver and surely the culture celebrated this big style.
What better way.
That day reminded me of the sanctity of the holy water fonts of my RC upbringing. But that’s another story.

The road seems to seperate this place from the rest of the Kilmartin sites – and all the little stones in the middle seem to seperate it from the usual stone circle thing.
I should have been paying more attention I suspect, because in retrospect, this is one of the most unusual sites I’ve been to.

Feb. 2000
This is a strong place. Could it be a compact and artistic, tribute to the linear nature of the (older??) Nether Largie cairns?
We just walked about for ages, trying to savour this place.

Feb. 2000.
We walked up the valley and visited all the cairns.
When I was posting the photos, I couldn’t remember which cairn was what.
I do remember lying in a cist on the valley floor and thinking that this was the most comfy, warm place in the world, and that I could have stayed there all day.
I sense that it bothers some folk that the alignment is not precise. This non precise alignment suggests that it is not a lunar or solar monument.
It would have been too easy to set these places in a precise straight line in the neolithic and the valley is in pretty much a straightish line anyway.
Maybe the decisions were made to have the line slightly out of kilter, as a compromise, or a deliberate quirk of the precise – cos that is sometimes what does work.

17/12/01 -I was just thinking about the rough SSW-NNE alignment of the cairns, the river, the valley and the Dunaad footprint (Iwas just reading the Dunaad entry from Gyrus).
The geology and subsequently the rivers and lochs of the whole of the Dalriadic Kingdom and indeed the whole of North Western Scotland follows this alignment. The most important journeys would have been in this direction, by foot and boat along the great sea lochs, glens and freshwater lochs. Look at any map of Scotland and it’s there. These journeys in peace and war, would have been physical and spiritual journeys at the time they were made, and would have become the stuff of legend and ritual.
Everything would have been in that alignment, such is the almost inpenetrable and fjord like nature of the sides of these great valleys. Even the Gulf Stream, which today brings much of West Scotlands weather (and I assume has for thousands of years) would have roughly followed this alignment.
Most of the storms, thoughts, dreams, fears, plans and total conciousness, would have all been in this direction, here and in much of the North West highlands.

just a thought?!

We visited this place in Feb. 2000.
I dont know what this is.
And I dont have theories that set me on fire.
But one thing is for sure – this is a very amazing place and I’m glad we came here.

We visited this site 2 years ago. It occurred to me that this may have been a very important place, given it’s situation in the Earn Valley.
Dundurn, just up the valley, was an important place 2000 years ago, certainly, and probably was for a long time before. This place was apparently at the border of the pictish and celtic kingdoms and has no doubt marked a boundary between the rugged highland westlands, and the fertile farmlands on the east since the neolithic.
This site is marked on the map as a former circle and now just the 2 stones remain.

I know nothing of this place.
We visited this stunning site 2 years ago, and I’ve bored people since with my pure enthusiasm since.
I’ve not seen this place as an entry in any gazzeteer or anything, but it deserves to be mentioned and not for the the usual compact aesthetics and feelings that other places have.
This whole hillside has the feel of one monument – and a powerful one at that! It is a must when visiting Perthshire!
Visit the stone on the green valley floor as a pre cursor and make your way up the hill to the first stone (a powerful thing that belies it’s 5 foot presence). Off up to the left and there is a MF of a thing which dominates the valley from all directions. This 12ft monster is surrounded by what looks likes untampered cists.
Sitting in a hollow in the hillside is a vicious stone at a terrible angle and then further south is a 6 footer with nearby untampered cists, marking the end of this special monument.
Every stone is visible from at least on other in the hillside and that seems to be important.
I can’t say enough about this whole place and what it did to me, and it was not all love and peace !
Next time I come here, I intent to visit the stones at Dalchirla, just down the valley.

It took us ages to find this place. It’s one of those places which requires orienteering skills to get there – a real quest.
According to the map there were 2 stones – we could only find 1, but according to the Ancient Scotland website, the other stone was under a fallen tree right beside us.
We visited on a cold January afternoon in 2000.
The stones are in the middle of a clear row in a Forestry commision forest. The place is totally sound insulated due to the trees, and this adds an eerieness.
Before the trees, this site would have had great views, as it sits on top of a gentle hill. A young River Carron rushes a few hundred metres to the North.
I want to go back and see the other stone.

I think this might have been the first neolithic site I went to, when I was about ten. My mum was showing the local sites to an American friend of the family, Kate Ascher. I remember this so well, because Kate’s visits were a highlight for us – she seemed uninhibited and free, more so than anyone else we’d met in our fairly restrictive council estate and R.C. upbringing. I also remember her as a humble and benevolent person. She later told us that she thought we were all referring to the ‘local hills’ when we talked about the Ochil Hills. Anyway I think me and my little brother were wearing the NY Yankees t-shirts that Kate had brought over, and we went for lunch at the Sheriffmuir Inn. I remember I was intrigued and a bit worried about the [one remaining] standing stone and there was talk of witchcraft and rituals.

I didn’t know, until a few years ago when I was looking at the OS Landranger, that this place was actually a stone row of five stones, of which only one remains upright.
On closer inspection, this site turns out to be very unusual.
The stones are almost perfectly aligned, roughly SW-NE. The most northerly stone looks as though it would have been the tallest, standing at about 10 feet tall. The second one is still standing at 6 foot, and is called the Wallace Stone (see folklore). The middle stone would have been around five feet tall. The fourth stone has split into two and would have been about seven feet tall. The south stone has cup markings.
The stones are all almost evenly spaced, being about a hundred metres apart.
When I last visited with a friend last year, we found animal bones and an animal skull around the stone.
The site is on rough, exposed, heathered moorland on the western shoulder of the Ochil Hills.

We drove past this circle in the summer of 2000. It sits on a steady steep slope, high above the NW side of Loch Tay. I recall taking my eye off the road and seeing a strange, small, boulder like circle.
I’ll have a proper look when I visit Kinnell in Killin hopefully soon.

8/6/02
We parked down at the horn-carvers shop just down the hill at Lawers.
This strange little circle is in beautiful place high up above the loch, with views of the water stretching up to the north-east and down the the south-west. The mighty Ben Lawers was only partially visible behind the circle on the day we visited.

The circle sits on what looks like a levelled platform which has been built up on one side of the slope. Inside the circle there are many small stones just below the undergrowth which might be broken parts of this partially destroyed monument or might be a kind of cairn – it’s hard to tell- these small stones and indeed the whole monument are more visible in Martin’s photo taken in 1986.

I shouted to stop the car when I saw Silbury just after leaving Avebury. I wasn’t expecting to see it. When I did I felt priveliged. I just gawped for 10 mins from half a mile from the hill. 2 years ago, 500 miles and I want to come back here. The impression I remember was that the hill has a magic, living presence.

We stopped the car just after we left Avebury on my request when I recognised this landscape and the horse.
I scrambled up to the top of a grassy bank with the video camera and stayed there for a minute or two. That’s all – just a minute – and it’s 2 years ago and 500 miles away, but Iwant to come back here.

My brother decided to stop here for lunch on the way to Falmouth for the eclipse in August 1999.
It was raining steadily but it was so warm and I walked and walked on the soggy chalk paths. I was cagouled in long shorts and sandals and it felt good.
Up on a nearby hill, someone had spirographed a nice crop circle and despite the rain, this place was so busy.
I could not comprehend this place as a whole, but I still found the visit exhilarating.
I walked down the avenue alone and I’ll never forget that.
A week wouldn’t be enough for all this.
Everyone else was waiting in the car when I got back.

I had been working for the best part of a week in Blackpool during the illuminations in November 1999. I was staying in a cold apartment, with the wind and the rain howling against a damp net-curtained window every night.
Travelling back home, I was so happy to stop here.
The henge at King Arthur’s looks almost too landscaped, but surely retains much of it’s strength, despite the close proximity of the roads. I didn’t stay too long.
I went over to Mayburgh. The sun was low and there was an eerie gloom inside the henge – those bare trees and the great pebbled edge surrounding that lonely stone. I remember a feeling of vastness and peace and I’d like to see this place at different times of the day.

This was worth the visit while we were up visiting Kintraw in Feb. 2000.
This is a simple cairn, with capstone still attatched.
We got directions from an eccentric, elderly woman who smelled of whisky and we didn’t expect to find it. The Cairn sits above the hamlet of Ardfern which is on the shore of the (sea) Loch Craignish, in a field beside a newish private house. The owners were helpful and we had the company of thier happy little collie dog for the duration of our visit.
Take the Road uphill from the village (towards Craobh) for about a hundred metres, then the private house is up a drive on the right hand side.

A friend and I visited this site in Feb. 2000. We drove (probably shouldn’t have) half way up the track which leads to this place and used the map to take us across the rough bit of moor land after the track. This is well worth it. These are three very weathered, rough and spooky looking stones, which were aligned in a NNW to SSE line.
Today the alignment is not the aesthetic feature that grabs you – it’s the spookily, comic way they now are. The N stone stands upright like a tooth, the middle stone is at an outrageous gravity defying angle and the S stone lies recumbent.
There is a feeling of power here, high up in the moorland.

We visited this site in Feb.2000. What a view. Situated high above the head of Loch Craignish on a steep bend in the A816 a short drive north from Kilmartin village.
The views SE over Loch Craignish towards the mountains of Jura and Islay are outstanding.
We had no time to explore the complex Alexander Thom theory as described in the MA. However, this stone seems to have a definite and precise vertical presence which would perhaps support this theory. The journey here is a must, if visiting the Kilmartin area.

I visited this site with a friend in late 1999 on a cold, damp, very overcast Saturday late afternoon, when we were both hungover. I want to say something about the panoramic nature of this place, but I can’t. I want to say something of the inside of the cairn, but we visited out of season and it was locked up.
When I’ve visited Cairnpapple under better conditions I’ll replace this posting.
Sometimes these sites can be so uplifting, and then sometimes so crushing. The mood, the mud, the heavy clouds in the sky, and in my head, all conspired to send us home.

I’d driven past this place hundreds of times before I knew it existed.
OK, it’s got It’s own motorway interchange, airport and MacDonalds for our convenience, but something remains of the original feel of this place, I’m sure.
You can see Arthur’s seat and castle rock in the city distance.
I visited this site with a friend in August 1999. This site is on low ground, most of the horizon has been taken and it has the feel of a landscaped park. The remaining stones are still impressive.
I’ve seen worse examples of disrespect and Hully Hill is still well worth the visit.
And I forgot about that big stone at the other side of the roundabout – it’s impossible to figure out the reasons for the siting of this stone by just being there now, but it’s good to see this stone surviving.

This broad 15 foot stone has a presence and a strength in the area of low lying land between the Ochil Hills to the north, and the Abbey Craig to the South.
It sits in the grounds of the University of Stirling (in the old Airthrey Castle estate-the Castle is just 300m to the north), at the side of some newly seeded rugby pitches, with a golf course nearby.
The stone’s existence was threatened recently (see misc. section) but survives now, still strong, between the golfers on it’s immediate west and the rugger bugger’s touchlines on the east.
The Abbey Craig, 500m to the south and Dumyat Hill (Ochils) 2.5km to the north east, seem to be important to the siting of this stone.

I took a break from a long drive home, to visit this site exactly 2 years ago in November 1999.
As I drove up to the stones, the vastness of this site hit me with a delicious excitement.
I was on a tight schedule unfortunately so I could only stay less than half an hour.
I walked around and around and in the circle, sitting on and touching the stones. I felt this place had an incredible spirituality and I so wanted to stay. You could spend the whole day here.
And after reading in the Modern Antiquarian about the attempts to destroy this place, being there, with the track going through the giant circle, the nearby farm, the sky, the earth and those trees adding thier own twist, this place does so much more than just survive.
Also a little thing which I almost forgot – there was a fine carpet of millions of these little spider web things covering the grass over the whole site and when I was facing the setting sun, this view, with the stones all around, was incredible.

We (my partner , my 2 boys and myself) visited Fortingall on the recommendation of one of the guides at the Kenmore Crannog Centre last August 2000.
We parked and set up the stove in the car park next to the hotel and cooked lunch (today, (19/11/01), we had rice cakes and baked beans with curry powder – not a meal we have a lot – and Al. remarked that this was the same lunch we had at Fortingall – I’d only posted this message yesterday and I replied that I should tell you all what we had for lunch at Fortingall – Al. told me not to be so stupid).
After lunch we visited the kirk and the yew tree and then took a walk to the 3 little stone circles down the road.

What a beautiful little site!

This village really did leave an impression on us all (well the adults anyway).

I visited this site (and Balbirnie) with a friend, last autumn at dusk, just as the lamp-posts which surround the henge were switched on. The houses have taken most of the horizon and most of the everything from this site – the street has been built so close to the edge of the henge.
Defying all are the remaining stones.
The complex and very ancient nature of this site is now hard to appreciate as is any kind of feeling.
Glenrothes has not been good to it’s ancient heritage and what happened here should make us vigilant.

Important in all the sites in this web site is the landscape that these monuments are set in. The particular points in the land where these sites are, were chosen, I’m sure, and not by chance. The whole monument was dismantled, moved, and reconstructed at the present site in 1970, (stones, burial cists and all), to fit in with the neat planning of the new-town road network. As if out of conscience for what happened to this site (and Balfarg), the planners have built a standing stone theme roundabout nearby.
I find this all a bit strange, and I didn’t have a good feeling after visiting this place.

My partner and I visited this site in summer 1993 – this was the first stone circle we both had been to.
We thought there might be ettiquette at these places – like hushed reverence or something – when we got there, there was an older couple lying down, snogging on the grass at the side of the circle. We looked about for a wee while then went back to the car and had our breakfast. We went back and the couple were away and we clambered about the stones, posing and taking photographs (I’ll try and upload them soon – I like these photos cos I’ve got a full head of hair and a couple of buttocks less fat). We stayed there all morning – it was a fresh bright morning – I’ll never forget the impression this place left on me.
We left and visited Culloden battlefield, later the same day (there was a mournful and haunting atmosphere here). The place was almost lost in a thick pea soup fog – couldn’t have been more different from East Aquhorthies.

Last year , I saw these cup and ring marks mentioned in the new landranger map (it wasn’t there in any older maps I had ever seen).
I became obsessed (see miscellaneous) and visited the site in October 2000, starting my walk from the village of Plean.
There are a few rocky outcrops in the area, some of which are heavily overgrown with gorse, and an old quarry.
I found some very weathered cup markings and a cup and ring mark on the edge of one of the outcrops and another group of markings in the middle of the same outcrop. It was getting dark and I walked to the village of Cowie and got the bus home. I hadn’t eaten all day and I was exhausted
This summer I avoided the site because of the foot and mouth threat.
I intend to go back to this place to take photos and spend more time looking about.

I didn’t know these stones existed until about 3 years ago, when I saw them marked on a victorian map. It took me to find out where exactly they were and then when I found them I was uplifted – these stones are less than a mile from my home.
I pass them several times a week now so it’s hard to write about them.
The stones are about 50m apart, sitting on the grass lawn at the front of the Central Scotland Police HQ where they train the alsations. (although naked shamanism is not advised, the site is fully accessible).
Despite being in the middle of the office zone of Stirling, with a main road closeby, there is still an air of peace here.
The stones are sat on a large raised flat shelf area, close to the raised ice age beach, above the Carse of Stirling. When the stones were erected, it is likely that the Carse was boggy, with the stones sat above and to the SW of the Carse, on dry, prime agricultural land. There would have been important views of the crag and tail formations of the Abbey Craig to the NE (Wallace Monument), the castle rock to the N (where the castle and old part of town now sit) and also sweeping views of the Ochil Hills to the N and E.
Much of the visible horizon is now taken up with the surrounding office buildings.
Despite this, Randolphfield is still a special place.
Check out the modern tributes to this pair at the other side of the main road in the front garden of 1 Newhouse, and at the pedestrian precinct in the town centre at the bottom of King Street half a mile to the north.

Had a picnic on our tartan rug here last summer, with the family. We were camping at Kenmore and on the only day of that week that the sun came out, we made the point of coming here for lunch and to dry out among these stones.
This is a special and complex place. Many trees on the other side of the road -cant see the confluence of the 2 great rivers a few hundred yards north and down the hill. We had a great lunch there though and the place has an alive feeling.
Also worth looking for are the 2 stones,(map ref. 793 467) less than a km to the south just inside the grounds of Taymouth Castle not far from the estate road.

I visited the Ballochmyle walls last summer with my partner and our two boys.
We didn’t have much clue as to where we were going – all we had was a road atlas and the directions in the Modern Antiquarian.
This part of the Ayr valley is truly enchanted. The valley is narrow, deep and heavily wooded – these woods are ancient. The surrounding land outside and above the valley is rolling green pastureland, so when you descend into the valley you feel like this is just a different world.
Our search for the walls turned into a true quest lasting an hour and a half of me scrambling around, losing, finding and losing the family. While searching, I was down by the river – it’s deep and dark and goes slow beneath great red sandstone cliffs on either side with these little red beaches at your feet, and the green canopies high above and all around. There’s also a huge red stone Victorian viaduct which straddles the valley nearby.
What a feeling when we found the walls!
They consist of 2 vertical cliff faces with a variety of cup / ring / animal and phallic symbols carved into the soft and brittle sandstone.
The cliffs were only rediscovered less than 20 years ago, so their current exposure leaves the carvings vulnerable to erosion – before rediscovery they were covered in thick vegetation.
The carvings are unusual, in that they are on vertical, not horizontal sheets, but quirks of a wider culture are understandable down there in that valley.
Also not usual in Scotland(?) is the animal carvings – the only other possible prehistoric animal carving I’ve seen in Scotland was at Dunaad.
You could spend all day here – the surroundings were warm and serene that day but the walls had a dark red drama that took our breath away. Our gameboy / pokemon obsessed boys were held in wonder and that was great to see.
It’s a bugger to find though and I can’t shed much light on how we found it other than to take a better map than we had.

-August 2002-
Came back here with Norie of the pictures.
I dont know if it’s my imagination but the walls looked to have deteriorated a bit.
And somebody has been at the carvings with a mix of charcoal, chalk and wax crayon.
This kind of thing is bad enough on horizontal sheets of hard rock but to arse about with these walls is plain vandalism as the rock is crumbly sandstone and the rain wont get a chance to wash the crayon etc. away as these are vertical cliffs.

It still remains a very special place but I felt pretty pissed off after this visit.