We parked at the cemetery and the others stayed in the car while I walked up through the oak trees to the stone circle. (5 minute walk)
After the last 3 weeks it was nice to be able to walk through trees for a change!
The stone circle itself is tiny – only about 5 metres across.
2 stones are about 0.5m high – 1 of pink stone
3 stones are about 1m high.
All the stones are covered in lichen.
This is a lovely little circle and well worth stopping off to visit.
04/03/2012 - I've lost count the amount of times I've driven past the turn off for this and said I must visit the stone circle up there one day. Well today we did. Reading the other fieldnotes I totally agree, this is a lovely little circle in a lovely setting. I can't think of any similar round here. Well worth a visit. Stones seem to blend with the surrounding oak trees this time of year.
What an absolute beaut! After a lovely, cool walk through the woods, we came across this cracking little circle and were more than pleased we decided to come - the heat of the day was starting to get to us and all we had really wanted to do was head back to Ballater and have a pint of cider!
We had struggled to see how we could get here at first, missing the turning twice - we hadn't realised that we needed to park by the cemetary and then walk. We obviously need to go on a map-reading course!
We sat in the dappled sunlight and just drank it all in. This tiny circle is made of up of improbably large stones and we spent a good hour just pottering around, enjoying the peace and solitude of this site. This is the most perfect spot and is the most perfect, small circle.
This wasn't on our itinerary, but we were driving past and couldn't resist a peep. This was a 'bonus track'. The map showed a potentially tedious walk which could be a hot, hideous waste of 20 precious minutes. You shouldn't really go 'off roading' in a Mazda 626 but I like a challenge. So at the point where most sensible people would park and walk, I drove on. Success!
Tucked away among oak woodland in the grounds of a hotel/conference centre thing stand five lovely good sized stones set close together in a fairy-ring stylee. From their relative positions, it seemed to me that either two stones were missing or it was a four-poster with an extra one slotted in for a reason I couldn't conceive.