Reflecting upon natural monuments in Argyll

Clauchlands and Corriegills are well-known as places where high quality pitchstone occurs. Even though it remains uncertain exactly where this stone was quarried in prehistory, I was very keen to visit this landscape. On my last day in Arran, this proved to be the place where the striking colours of the island finally converged.

Today, I explored the west coast of Arran, starting at an unusual monument before exploring the coastline. Here are a group of impressive caves, sources of pitchstone and a distinctive headland with a standing stone.

Arran was the source of an extraordinary raw material used by people in the Neolithic: pitchstone. During my visit, I was very interested to explore the origins of this unusual material. One location where it outcrops is high in the mountains.

Today, I visited a group of intriguing rock features on the Helvellyn range in the central Lake District. This remote plateau is around 880m (2880 feet) above the sea, and was in the grip of winter.

A skyline walk along the main ridge of the Simonside Hills reveals a series of Bronze Age burial mounds that have interesting relationships to rock formations and the sky.

This week I visited three probable Bronze Age cairns on a prominent ridge near Rothbury in Northumberland. They have been partially robbed, and remodeled in recent times, but are set in a striking location.

Walker and author Linda Cracknell recently broadcast a thought provoking piece about quartz, and it features my research on Ben Lawers in collaboration with Richard Bradley.

Cloudless skies today in Hoy, so I headed out along the coastline and up into the hills.