stolinskie

To my surprise, the church is now a home! Didn’t meet anyone on my visit but also didn’t enter the former churchyard. I found the smaller of the two stones then walked around like an idiot looking for the big one for a while until I went back to my car and it was right next to it :)

Reminds me of a pleasant afternoon spent with a pal in Kent looking for Wayland’s Smithy, let’s just say sometimes the stones can lead us on a merry old dance.

After sitting in the sunshine for a while absorbing the lessons of Old Keig RSC, I decided to give myself another chance to find Cothiemuir Wood circle. I had stupidly managed to come out without both a charged phone and a OS map, so I was a bit in the dark. I’d already got as far as the sign off the road for the natural burial site, which since it used an image of the recumbent and flankers was probably a fair bet, so I went back towards Cothiemuir from Old Keig (which is pretty close) and impulsively decided to park on an unused track just off the road at the bend before the burial site turnoff. I wandered up though lovely trees and suddenly spied a flanker standing tall!

It’s a beautiful site, nowadays standing in an area of chopped trees, funny how that really changes things in photos but in reality it probably always had a great ambience. Trees still visible and of course the hill, not the water – I always forget to look for the water, which is often nearby. Of course that was down the hill beside the road and the old granary.

The flankers were great! They are pink granite and very impressive in person. The recumbent is huge and had a mad face in it. I was at first puzzled by the slab in the middle with burnt wood nestling underneath it, but that of course was the cist.

I had been there for a while when two other people appeared, which made me realise how lucky I am in Aberdeenshire to mostly have circles to myself. Still I didn’t mind to share the space since I was thinking to head off; we said hello and one woman chatted with me about stone circles. She seemed quite knowledgeable so I enquired if she knew this website and she said she doesn’t really use the internet which I have to admit surprised me.

In this day and age, I’d find it very hard to research sites without this site and the internets more broadly. She told me she was a therapist and perhaps unsurprisingly she then told me the stones have healing properties – I don’t necessarily disagree. In her opinion, Cothiemuir has a gentle healing energy, Old Keig more aggressive, Sunhoney is the best for healing, Monymusk is for making decisions, Midmar has hard energy, Aikey Brae is a good one as is Berrybrae.

This made me wonder if my habit of trying to see two or three RSCs in an afternoon is the right approach; I do remember having a very nice relaxing time at Sunhoney and I would say Midmar once felt pretty scary visiting at midnight, however I also do think we all take (and give) different things to the stones. In any case it was an interesting spring equinox conversation. She told me confidently that the beautiful flankers had been quarried at Bennachie and most neighbouring stone circles had some pink in them. I do hope the two women had a great healing sesion after I left. I certainly enjoyed finding Cothiemuir and next time I’d park at the burial site, which is I think is probably what they did.

What a cracker of a monument!! I’ve tried to find this a few times and finally succeeded on the spring equinox. As others have noted, the setting is sublime and despite only the recumbent and flankers remaining, it’s a stunning site, with the view down to Dunnideer castle and the way the hill drops away.

I hadn’t seen Stoneheid’s message so I parked on the road just off the junction, which seemed out of the way enough to me then walked down and hopped the rickety gate.

So Craigroy is the farm next door (with an impressively large recumbent stone next to the road) and this site is actually on the land of Haugh Farm. I was lucky enough to have an introduction to the farmers, who were happy to show me the stones and at the same time ensure their dogs didn’t eat me :) They said they hadn’t thought much about the provenance of the stones and guessed maybe they were Pictish, so I was happy to tell them the little I knew about bronze age burials. Lovely people. After later researching the site as I enjoy doing, I’ve sent them some links and told them about the excellent NLS maps service.

Having just read Richard Hayman’s excellent ‘Riddles in Stone’ it really tickles me how he says that people are wont to interpret ancient sites in the way that fits their own world view. So for example classical scholars saw stone circles in the light of Athenian temples, and I see sites as possible rave venues. This small grave is in a beautiful location near to the River Avon as it surges down to the Spey.

Canmore says this is a burial cist marked by the three stones and I interpret that as the excavators leaving the three standing as markers, because I’ve never seen a cist like that before. It also occurs to me it’s a small burial site and perhaps many sites like this have been destroyed over the years. It’s currently listed here as a bank barrow, which seems unlikely because it is so small.

I came up through rhododendron bushes from the Foulford Bridge cairn, a route which I would not recommend. Better to come on the track from the bridge and then climb a quick steep ascent.

Garrrr this one was a nightmare, the rhododendron bushes have completely taken over (see pix) so I got close to it but didn’t see anything :(

Found this cairn quite easily following a mossy track off from the main way at the Foulford bridge. This is the closest one to the bridge. The pheasant prison is gone! Just the foundations remain. The cairn will outlast us all.

I went to Forgue and parked at the Walter Scott hall (in use but closed when I was there). I walked up past the school and into the woods. On reflection, it seems a strange place to put a school – right up a hill on the edge of a village – but I suppose back in the day there were a lot of kids coming down the hill from crofts and farms, unlike today. As a sidenote, there are two churches in Forgue and they are both placed on gorgeous sites across the burn from each other and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are built on top of more ancient monuments.

It was a nice walk up the hill through the trees, beech and pine. I walked past the “turn off” over the fence to Raich stone circle, which I visited on the way back. I carried on up the track with trees on one side and fields on the other, until using the OS app it was judged time to take a right down a track, sticking to the countours of the hill. This led me along a winding path until the OS app told me i was next to the circle, so I advanced 5 metres into a mess of fallen trees and torn up earth (see pix). Checked the app again, turned round and the quartz encrusted stone was right behind me! I was excited at first because I thoguht it was a massive chunk of quartz (as at Auchmaliddie, which I’d love to visit), but having look at the other pix here it seems to only have a wee bit on top. Pretty though and interesting that there was similar rock at Raich nearby.

But yeah the site was an impenetrable, indecipherable mess, with trees blocking everything from access to view. Frankly I see this as the responsibility of the land owner to sort out since they should be maintaining an ancient monument on “their” land. I don’t think these trees came down that recently and I noticed the track was being kept clear in any case, so there are people about. To sum up: I found the three stones of the smashed recumbent with difficulty, had a picnic, it started raining, I left. And that was it.

I’ve been meaning to check out this mound a while and today was the day. After long deliberations, I decided that the layby just by the bridge down from Nether Blairock farmhouse was ok to park in since it’s not a passing place. I def think about these things too much, but on the flipside I’d also be mortified if I parked somewhere that was in the way.

I went under the bridge and up the burn, coz I do loves a bit of stream exploration. Underneath it’s obvious that the bridge is doubled, presumably from when they widened the turnpike. Half stream walking, half following the deer tracks, I ended up at the base of the mound next to a badger latrine.

The mound seen up close is impressive and certainly man-made. It’s steep climb to the top, although not a long one because it’s only 8m high (3m from the field beside it). Did people live there? It seems small for that, but Dunadd also seemed small and that was centre of a kingdom back in the day! Now sitting peaceful in the trees beside the B-road, the mound would have had a commanding position over the turning to Kirkton of Deskford. In 2019, a core sample was taken and it was dated to between 386 BC and 206 BC.

A colleague suggested that the people who lived here then moved on to build Inaltry Castle, I’m not sure about that because there’s also Davie’s Castle (a hillfort) nearby and this place seems more ceremonial than a defended citadel. It’s also pretty close to the Deskford ritual centre, where the carnyx was found. In any case, it proved a lovely short visit which cheered me right up on a crispy October day in 2024.

Visited in November 2024, when access was quite easy becuase the crop (barley?) had been harvested. The stones seemed a bit sad and neglected, but as others have said, wow what a stunning location.