Today marks 5 years since @jacquelineboor and I got together. Today, we went on a day out with Berry the Labrador to visit Nunney Castle for the first time.
Nunney Castle was built in 1373. It originally was surrounded by a curtain wall on three sides and a brook on a fourth side. Although the brook still flows, all that remains now is the main shell-keep. However, this is surrounded by a water filled moat and the castle is now accessed via a small foot bridge. The castle was damaged during the Civil War, and the conical roofs of the four corner towers no longer remain. But what is still there is some great architecture, in a beautiful setting.
Berry was very well behaved off the lead, and even took part in a photo shoot with my new iPhone 8 Plus. Portrait mode was made for such a pretty dog. đ
Blue sky, green grass and tranquil water made a great setting for such a small castle. Very romantic, well worth a visit.
On Saturday I raced in the Brompton World Championship Final 2017. Entries are selected via a ballot, and up to 600 racers take part. The race consists of 8 laps around a 1.34mile track in St. Jamesâ Park, London. The rules are: you ride a Brompton - and you donât wear lycra. Even though the weather was typically British-summer, the hospitality area atmosphere during the warm up was great. Plenty of beer, coffee and gin to get everyone in the mood for good time.
The race ended with no accidents (amazing, considering the race conditions), and I completed 9.38 miles (7 laps) in 29:34. Came 168th out of 423 riders. It was so much fun, I canât wait to do it again. Fingers crossed I get a spot in next years race! And if I do I will a) where a funkier suit and b) aim to beat my ranking and time from this year.
Today, @jacquelineboor and I visited Stoney Littleton Long Barrow in Somerset.
Stoney Littleton was one of the first monuments protected under the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882, and is âone of the countryâs finest accessible examples of a Neolithic chambered tombâ. It reminded me of the tombs we saw on our trip to Orkney, because of how intact it remains and the ability to crawl inside and see the chambers.Â
There were a couple of highlights for me. First is the huge ammonite impression in an upright on the left of the main entrance. I canât help but ponder what the Neolithic people 5,500 years ago thought this was. Could they comprehend it was the remains of an extinct animal? Did they think it was a natural anomaly in the stone? Or something more mystical? We will never know.
The other highlight was the setting. The weather was fantastic, and to reach the monument you needed to cross a small wooden footbridge over the Wellow Brook. In this weather, the green of the trees, the grass, and water plants through the crystal-clear water just made everything âpopâ. It looked amazing.
Final set of photos from mine and @jacquelineboorâs visit to New York. Even though I have been before, I will most certainly be going again. And with @jacquelineboor in tow. đ˝
A beautiful site on a beautiful day: Knowlton Church and Earthworks.
âThis Norman church, which was built in the 12th century, is situated at the centre of a Neolithic ritual henge earthwork. Â The unusual pairing of the henge and the church symbolises the transition from pagan to Christian worship.
Not many parish churches stand in ruins, and fewer still occupy sites associated with prehistoric rituals. Four thousand years separate the main late Neolithic earthwork at Knowlton and the Norman church that stands at its centre. The earthwork itself is just one part of a landscape which is one of the great Neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial complexes in southern England.â
Well, we finally made it. The Rockstar of Rocks-in-fields: Stonehenge.
@jacquelineboor and I wanted get a feel for how Stonehenge fits within the larger prehistoric landscape. So we decided to follow a National Trust walk - a circular from Woodhenge, to Stonehenge, and back again. The guide said the walk would take 4 hours, but I think it took half of that.Â
It starts at the Woodhenge car park, right next to Durrington Walls - a huge henge enclosure that they now believe was linked to Stonehenge along a processional route. Durrington Walls is known as the âland of the livingâ, where the builders of Stonehenge lived and feasted. They then would take a processional route down the river Avon, and follow The Avenue to the âland of the deadâ at Stonehenge.
The Avenue is a parallel pair of banks and ditches that lead from the river Avon to Stonehenge. It runs down into a shallow valley, where you lose sight of Stonehenge, and then abruptly turns and runs straight (following natural geological features formed during the last ice age and aligned with the midwinter solstice). As you walk up the hill, Stonehenge begins to appear on the horizon. During the midwinter solstice, it must of been an awe inspiring sight.
After visiting the stone circle and the visitors centre, we meandered back across the National Trust land taking in the abundant Bronze Age round barrows, and the Stonehenge Cursus. The walk is flat and very achieveable. I would recommend it as the way for anyone to experience this World Heritage Site.
Itâs been a while, but today @jacquelineboor and I went to visit a local Neolithic site we haven't seen before - Stanton Drew Circles and Cove.
Stanton Drew is the home of the second largest stone circle in England, after Avebury. The Great Circle measures 113m in diameter and consisted of 30 standing stones, 26 of which survive. The collection of stones is fairly unknown, and spread over now privately owned land. The English Heritage website says it best: âThis obscurity, and the lack of modern intrusions into their surroundings, have protected their solitude and characterâ. The Cove is a horseshoe of three stones that reside in the garden of the local pub (called the Druids Arms). The three stone circles are on farmland, but the farmer kindly allows access for ÂŁ1 - paid via an honesty box. There is a print out of the history of the stones by the box also, and short-stay carpark.
The stones that make up the circles are huge - as big as anything we have seen in Orkney. It makes you wonder why our ancestors deemed this place so special - not only to move such huge stones in such a quantity, but also to make so many circles in close proximity.
In the final post from our trip to Orkney, these photos are from my favourite monument - Cuween Hill Chambered Tomb.
Cuween Hill was cut out of solid bedrock about 5,000 years ago. From Orkneyjar: âAside from the human bones, perhaps the most interesting discovery [when the cairn was excavated in 1901] was that of 24 dog skulls. This led to the suggestion that the tombâs users may have had totem animals. One theory has it that dogs may have been used to strip the flesh from the dead before their remains were interred in the tomb.âÂ
As the Orkneyjar says:Â âAccess to the interior is by a low, narrow, entrance passage, which, being less than one metre high, requires the visitor to get down on their hands and knees and crawlâ. Just like Wideford Hill, there is a wooden box including a torch and, on this occasion, candles and matches (for the ultimate authenticity of viewing the inside by fire-light!). But the experience inside is the epitome of the Neolithic tomb experience - pitch black inside, crawling through the original entrance, with only fire to light your way. You canât get much better.
These posts are only a few photos of what we saw on our trip to Scotland. We hardly made a dent in what is to be discovered in Orkney, let alone Scotland as a whole. As the saying goes âScratch the surface of Orkney and it bleeds archaeologyâ. With the Ness of Brodgar site not even 10% excavated, a return trip is definitely on the cards in the future.
This is Skara Brae, a Neolithic village where people lived between 3200BC and 2200BC. That means people lived here before Stonehenge, the Pyramids or The Great Wall of China were built.
It was discovered in 1850, and then rediscovered and excavated in the 1920s and 1930s. It was found when a storm blew away the sand that had encased it for thousands of years. By chance, this sand had preserved the houses and contents impeccably. Inside were beds, stone âdressersâ, toilets and sunken water-tight bait boxes.
The weather when we visited was amazing, the blues of the sea mixing with the green grass topping the walls gives the pictures and views popping colour. I am glad we got to see it, as it wonât be here forever - in Neolithic times the village would have been a lot further away from the sea than it is today. Although 8 dwellings survive today, there may have been many more that have been lost to the sea over time. A sea-defence has been built to try and protect these relics for as long as possible, but they wonât protect it forever.
Wideford Hill Chambered Tomb is one of an abundance of Neolithic tombs all around Orkney.Â
Wideford Hill is about 5,000 years old and built in a similar style to Maeshowe, although not on such a grand scale. It was originally entered like most Neolithic tombs through a narrow passage 17.4 feet long and less than two feet high and wide. But this has been blocked off and now the tomb is entered though a sliding hatch and ladder from the top. This makes the experience of descending into the darkness even more unique, and something I have only experienced in Orkney. There is even a little wooden box with a torch inside for visitors to use!
From the outside you can see the concentric circles that make up the structure (a bit like the tiers of a wedding cake). Originally it would have been covered in earthen dome, but this was removed in modern times to show the masonry underneath.
We parked our car and took a path about 2km that hugs the edge of the hill until it leads to the cairn. When on the hill overlooking the Bay Oâ Firth, you can see why these prehistoric farmers decided this should be the final resting place for their community. I would recommend this cairn over Maeshowe anyday.
The Barnhouse Settlement is one of the newest discoveries that make up the Heart of Neolithic Orkney. Up to 14 buildings were found near the Standing Stones of Stenness, where people would have lived as much as 5,100 years ago and onwards. One of the things that make this settlement special is the way it relates to the stone circle.Â
Originally processions would have began at the settlement, and there is a causeway across the original bank and ditch henge surrounding the stone circle that leads from here. There seems to be some link between the hearth at the centre of Structure 8 and the hearth in the centre of the stones - showing fire, food and celebration were shared between these domestic dwellings and the rituals of the circle.
The Standing Stones of Stenness is the oldest stone circle in the entire world, built sometime between 5,400 and 4,500 years ago. There were once up to 12 stones standing here. One theory of these stones, and those at Brodgar, are that each came from a different part of Orkney - and therefore a different community. These places may have been meeting places, where people came to celebrate, exchange goods, get married and speak to ancestors.
We were lucky enough to visit the Standing Stones during a brief gap with no other tourists - allowing us to get some uninterrupted shots, including a selfie!
The final shot is Maeshowe, which is said to be the finest chambered tomb in north-west Europe. It is around 5,000 years old, and the mound is about 35m across and 7m high. The masonry is amazing, the quality of work is unimaginable for the times - people 5,000 years ago with no machinery or even metal tools were building such grand manmade monuments . The dome-shaped roof was created using a technique called corbelling, and shows the Neolithic peoples understanding of architecture. The cherry on top is its orientation - it was built so that on the mid-winter solstice, the sunset shines down the 10m long entrance passage and fills the chamber with light.
Unfortunately you are not permitted to take pictures inside Maeshowe. Although the construction is impressive, in my opinion there are many other lesser-known tombs to be seen on Orkney that give you a more authentic experience. More on those in some upcoming posts.
This is the first of five posts from mine and jacquelineboorâs trip to Orkney. The photos are a mix of mine taken on an iPhone 6 and Jackieâs taken on a Nikon D3200.
At 104m in diameter, The Ring of Brodgar is the third biggest prehistoric stone circle in Britain. It is one of the key monuments that make up the Heart of Neolithic Orkney, the UNSECO World Heritage Site. Originally it would have been made of up to 60 stones, 36 of which survive.
The placement of the Ring is electric. It sits between the seawater Loch of Stenness and the freshwater Loch of Harray. The surrounding hills creates a âbowlâ with this ritual place in the centre. The area is also full of nature - wild flowers and birds live in and around the Ring. One of the best things about the Ring is that it still keeps its air of mystery - no one knows exactly how old it is (although it is thought to have been built 4,500-4,000 years ago). And we will never know exactly what it was used for.
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