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Four Stones (Powys)
Date Added: 9th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Circle
Country: Wales (Powys)
Visited: Yes on 1st Jun 2000. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 4 Access 5
Four Stones (Powys) submitted by vicky on 13th Sep 2002. The Four Stones Stone Circle in Powys. Photo taken by Cassian Hall.
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Log Text: Compact and intense, the four stones stand at the edge of a field, the tallest is just high enough to peep over the wall at the edge of the lane. Judging by photos of my then wife next to the stones three of the four are above five feet, the tallest nearer six. The fourth stone is somewhat stumpier but still a boulder of some stature. They appear to be arranged in more a square than a circle.
Bryn Celli Ddu
Date Added: 15th May 2024
Site Type: Passage Grave
Country: Wales (Anglesey)
Visited: Yes on 3rd Apr 2013. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 5 Access 4
Bryn Celli Ddu submitted by wildtalents on 14th May 2024. I've plenty of better shots (somewhere) but the wonderful ziggyzag pattern on the stone in front of the portal is captured fairly well here.
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Log Text: A few miles away the Snowdonia peaks were still covered in snow and the lake at the foot of Snowdon was still frozen... but the first signs of a belated spring were all over Anglesey. Which made it a perfect day to visit and appreciate Bryn Celli Ddu, an absolutely perfect chambered tomb that you have to see.
Ness of Brodgar
Date Added: 10th May 2024
Site Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Country: Scotland (Orkney)
Visited: Yes on 15th Jul 2015. My rating: Condition 3 Ambience 4 Access 5
Ness of Brodgar submitted by wildtalents on 10th May 2024. Structures uncovered at the Ness Of Brodgar, photographed in July 2015
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Log Text: I visited while the annual dig season was in full swing. Difficult to interpret what you're seeing (and much more excavation has been made in the years since, 2024 being the final year of excavation). This isthmus of land is packed with so much history but don't overlook the Ness if you are nearby.
Stenness
Date Added: 8th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Circle
Country: Scotland (Orkney)
Visited: Yes on 13th Jul 2015. My rating: Condition 4 Ambience 5 Access 4
Stenness submitted by Runemage on 15th Jul 2005. Ethereal and numinous.
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Log Text: In the summer of 2015 I drove from Kent to Orkney in two or three long hops, staying several nights at the Standing Stone Hotel which is (was?) about a mile from the Stones of Stenness. I'd wanted to visit here for soooo long, in particular these stones, ever since seeing them on that Julian Cope album. I can't remember the name right now. Impressive stones, even though the site is probably a shadow of what it once was.
Barnhouse Settlement
Date Added: 17th May 2024
Site Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Country: Scotland (Orkney)
Visited: Yes on 14th Jul 2015. My rating: Condition 3 Ambience 4 Access 4
Barnhouse Settlement submitted by wildtalents on 10th May 2024. One of the Barnhouse houses. The settlement is a stone's throw from the Stones of the Stenness and has a direct view of Maes Howe
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Log Text: A short ramble from the Stones of Stenness, there are several recognisable structures at ground level, with hearths and other characteristic features. Can't hold a candle to Skara Brae, but then what sites can?
Ring of Brodgar
Date Added: 12th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Circle
Country: Scotland (Orkney)
Visited: Yes on 13th Jul 2015. My rating: Condition 4 Ambience 5 Access 4
Ring of Brodgar submitted by wildtalents on 10th May 2024. There were at least two other photographers doing sunset shots at Brodgar on this evening. I was happy enough with how this one turned out.
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Log Text: As I was staying nearby I took the opportunity to visit this magnificent monument several times, at different times of day. The first visit was the best: the sun was beginning to set (but it stays low on the horizon a long time at this time of year on Orkney) and the stones cast the most almighty shadows. How the henge ditch was dug in this very solid rocky landscape I can only imagine. The people who built the monuments at Stenness definitely made no half measures.
Maes Howe
Date Added: 12th May 2024
Site Type: Chambered Cairn
Country: Scotland (Orkney)
Visited: Yes on 16th Jul 2015. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 5 Access 4
Maes Howe submitted by wildtalents on 10th May 2024. Approaching the passage into Maes Howe. Our tour guide was blind but I would not have realised if she had not told us so. Fascinating talk about this most wonderful site.
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Log Text: Make sure to book early as the limited numbers allowed in the Howe at one time might mean it's several days before you can find a slot. Our guide was blind, but clearly knew every inch of the site and it was only when she told us this that it became apparent she was using muscle memory and perhaps a very hazy tunnel vision to navigate. The twenty-ish minutes passed in an instant.
The craftsmanship of Maes Howe is breathtaking.
Skara Brae
Date Added: 12th May 2024
Site Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Country: Scotland (Orkney)
Visited: Yes on 15th Jul 2015. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 5 Access 4
Skara Brae submitted by wildtalents on 10th May 2024. This view of a hearth and dresser at one of the best-preserved Skara Brae houses is somewhat of a cliché
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Log Text: Absolutely stunningly preserved settlement, down to the stone dressers, hearths, sleeping quarters . . . a shame one of the houses is sealed off but there's enough to keep you occupied for an hour. It can get very busy though.
Cuween Hill
Date Added: 17th May 2024
Site Type: Chambered Cairn
Country: Scotland (Orkney)
Visited: Yes on 16th Jul 2015. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 5 Access 2
Cuween Hill submitted by wildtalents on 10th May 2024. Inside, looking down the entrance way of Cuween Hill chambered cairn
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Log Text: A gem of a site, this is like a miniature Maes Howe. Not much room inside and very dark. There's a torch you can borrow but no guarantee the batteries will be any good so you might want to take your own. There are lots of details you will miss in the dark.
Isbister: Tomb Of The Eagles
Date Added: 17th May 2024
Site Type: Chambered Cairn
Country: Scotland (Orkney)
Visited: Yes on 14th Jul 2015. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 5 Access 2
Isbister: Tomb Of The Eagles submitted by wildtalents on 10th May 2024. There's a protective concrete cap over the chambers of the Tomb Of The Eagles. It doesn't detract from this very worthwhile site... and what a spectacular walk to get there!
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Log Text: A bit of a trek from the visitor centre/museum... but a spectacular one, looking out over impressive cliffs with open sea as far as the eye can see. Guillemots and every other bird with a squawk to offer contribute to the soundtrack. There's a monument to the archaeologist who curated this site a few metres from the tomb.
The tomb is wonderful, even with the crude concrete cap etc, and the craftmanship with which the stones were interlocked is fabulous.
Isbister: Bronze Age House
Date Added: 17th May 2024
Site Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Country: Scotland (Orkney)
Visited: Yes on 14th Jul 2015. My rating: Condition 2 Ambience 4 Access 2
Isbister: Bronze Age House submitted by wildtalents on 14th May 2024. If memory serves the mound behind the 'house' is a midden made up of stones burnt there. A hearth-like structure (not shown) could be filled with water and then heated by dropping in red hot stones, later discarded a few yards away. I recall some speculation that maybe it was a tannery and was a little removed from other residences because, well, if you've ever lived near a tannery you'll click to why straight away.
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Log Text: Not far from the Tomb Of The Eagles, this was probably an industrial building of a sort, maybe a tannery? Whatever it was, there was much use made of a pool for heating water using red-hot stones. Some of the discarded stones are strewn nearby but most form a midden to one side, now mostly overgrown.
Tomb of the Eagles Museum
Date Added: 8th May 2024
Site Type: Museum
Country: Scotland (Orkney)
Visited: Yes on 14th Jul 2015. My rating: Condition 4 Ambience 4 Access 5
Log Text: Marvellous museum displaying relics from the Tomb Of the Eagles and one of those rare places that encourages you to handle some of the exhibits. Various stone implements, an eagle's talon, and so on. The inevitable gift shop is not half bad.
Devil's Arrows
Date Added: 8th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Row / Alignment
Country: England (Yorkshire (North))
Visited: Yes on 22nd Apr 2023. My rating: Condition 4 Ambience 4 Access 4
Devil's Arrows submitted by Humbucker on 27th Apr 2019. All three Devils Arrows looking from the north. The light improved for a brief few minutes & the sun made a brief appearance while I was there before turning into a flat, grey evening.
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Log Text: On a day when it never stopped raining it was still worth trudging (trespassing) through the farmer's knee-high crops of I don't know what, rather than gazing at the two smaller arrows from afar. The biggest arrow is across the road and mighty impressive.
Easy parking at the roadside: the site is now perched on the edge of a modern "little boxes" housing estate.
Brimham Rocks
Date Added: 11th May 2024
Site Type: Rock Outcrop
Country: England (Yorkshire (North))
Visited: Yes on 22nd Apr 2023. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 5 Access 3
Brimham Rocks submitted by wildtalents on 10th May 2024. On a soggy day a few miles from Harrogate, 22 April 2023
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Log Text: Rather a grey damp day, hence the site was a bit slippy. Genuinely fun though, and I enjoyed the coy sign near the top of the site which points out all the landmarks you can see on the horizon BUT NOT the bloody awful RAF Menwith Hill NSA complex which we must all apparently pretend does not exist.
I enjoyed the local crows too, very accustomed to begging scraps from tourists but in a gentlemanly sort of a way.They park theyselves nearby, sneak a look at you every now and then, then politely look away in a "I'm just chillin' mate" kinda way. The second you chcuk them a bit of sausage roll though all decorum is abandoned and the victor speeds off to the nearest outcrop to munch smugly. Will definitely go back.
Longstone Cove
Date Added: 14th May 2024
Site Type: Standing Stones
Country: England (Wiltshire)
Visited: Yes on 6th Jun 2004. My rating: Condition 3 Ambience 4 Access 3
Longstone Cove submitted by Humbucker on 5th Jan 2019. Longstones Cove basking in the sunlight on one of the last bright days of late Autumn 2018. The Ridgeway looms if the background.
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Log Text: In 2004 we rented a cottage in Avebury village for a week and one evening when the boys weren't complaining too much about tired legs we walked the putative route of the Beckhampton Avenue. There really are a lot of sarsens at the sides of the road, incorporated into walls, half-buried at the side of the road and so on, as well as some very swanky houses. We ended the walk near the duck pond with a fairly distant view of the Longstones, Adam and Eve, isolated in their field about two hundred yards away. By then the kids were all walked out so it seemed reasonable to turn around and leave the trespass onto the site itself for another time. They're an impressive pair of stones, on a par with the Avebury Cove stones.
Stonehenge.
Date Added: 9th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Circle
Country: England (Wiltshire)
Visited: Yes on 1st Feb 1987. My rating: Condition 4 Ambience 2 Access 3
Stonehenge. submitted by Bladup on 9th Jan 2024. The Heel Stone Quietly Watching The Winter Solstice Setting Sun at Stonehenge, 2023
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Log Text: I haven't been to Stonehenge for a very long time now, the last visit I recall at all clearly was in the company of a newish girlfriend on an absolutely freezing day. But I visited often as a child, in the days when you could wander around anywhere and even - gasp - touch the stones. I believe my ex-wife and I visited with our son (only child, at the time) when we went camping in the area which would have been about 2000-ish. I guess I might go back sometime but to be honest it is always anticlimactic.
West Kennet Avenue
Date Added: 17th May 2024
Site Type: Multiple Stone Rows / Avenue
Country: England (Wiltshire)
Visited: Yes on 3rd Jun 2014. My rating: Condition 4 Ambience 5 Access 3
West Kennet Avenue submitted by wildtalents on 14th May 2024. A goodnight hug for a West Kennet Avenue stone in August 2002. I think a car headlight must have hit the menhir at an opportune moment which suggests it's one of the first ones after you cross the road. Most of the others are not at the right angle for this.
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Log Text: I don't remember when I first visited the Avenue but it wasn't on the first time I went to Avebury, which was pretty stupid. I think we were in a hurry to quaff a beer at the Red Lion and to be swarmed by the local wasps. And then to get the buses home, which was a way convoluted trip from Warminster.
The next time, equipped with a driving license, we took a proper walk up and down the Avenue and it was really supernatural. None of the photos came out. Which may have been spooky but more likely simple incompetence. We saw many figures and faces in the stones, this was before Terence Meaden's book came out btw.
In 2014 we rented School Cottage for a week (this is opposite the church's tithe gate). We had the opportunity to explore all of the site many times, at different times of day. I forget which day of the week, but think it was Wednesday, a long procession of bikers streamed into the Red Lion car park as we walked the Avenue in the twilight. That was pretty cool.
Avebury
Date Added: 15th May 2024
Site Type: Stone Circle
Country: England (Wiltshire)
Visited: Yes on 5th May 2016. My rating: Condition 4 Ambience 5 Access 5
Avebury submitted by wildtalents on 14th May 2024. The missus (foreground) referred to this as The Elephant Stone. While I see the resemblance, it looks more like a knight (as in the chess piece, Staunton design). But either way it's certainly one of the more evocative shapes of sarsen.
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Log Text: Having visited Avebury numerous times I've chosen the date when I last visited, which was already seven years ago. Each time we visited we would take a photo of one of us, or one of the kids, sat on the Devil's Chair, and by estimating ages (if the images themselves aren't dated) could come up with a chronology of some kind.
In 2004 we rented a cottage in the village for a week and that gave us a really good chance to explore more fully. When the kids got bored of that we took them to Swindon for the day. They liked it lol.
We walked the putative route of the Beckhampton Avenue one evening. There really are a lot of sarsens at the sides of the road, incorporated into walls, half-buried at the side of the road and so on. Pete Glastonbury's CD captured these very well.
The walk petered out at the Longstones, Adam and Eve, isolated in their field about two miles or so from Avebury village.
West Kennett Long Barrow
Date Added: 9th May 2024
Site Type: Long Barrow
Country: England (Wiltshire)
Visited: Yes on 1st Jul 1997. My rating: Condition 5 Ambience 5 Access 2
West Kennett Long Barrow submitted by jackdaw1 on 16th Oct 2007. A shot taken inside West kennet long barrow nr. Avebury on 25 sec exposure at f16-conjuring spooky feels.
A small child called jake was happily playing and respectfully enjoying the atmosphere in there.
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Log Text: The only time we visited the West Kennet Long Barrow we were just about to leave when a bunch of folks turned up and held some kind of a sing-song inside. We hung about a while marvelling at the booming then made our way down the hill just in case some sacrificial rite might be about to unfold.
Prior to that, we'd had about thirty minutes to recover from the uphill walk, have a smoke, and admire the Avebury sacred landscape as it unfolds below you. The view of Silbury Hill from up there is second-to-none. The Barrow itself is reconstructed quite substantially but if you ignore the little bits of mortar here and there it is possible to imagine yourself many many hundreds of years before, literally in the bowels of the Earth. A magic place and I have to visit again.
Silbury Hill
Date Added: 10th May 2024
Site Type: Artificial Mound
Country: England (Wiltshire)
Visited: Yes on 4th Jun 2014. My rating: Condition 4 Ambience 4 Access 5
Silbury Hill submitted by MikeyB on 26th Nov 2012. Reflections of Silbury Hill
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Log Text: Passed by many times, stopped for a while quite a few, dating back to the 1960s. Silbury is timeless, commanding the landscape. I like that it is so enigmatic, I love how at certain points within the southern circle at Avebury the very top of Silbury is just visible above the henge bank. At moments like those it is easier to imagine yourself back in the distant past when some sudden flash of a mirror in the sun, or a fire on the twilight horizon, alerts you to a world beyond the ceremonial complex, yet a part of it.