A wood and standing stones

Up here in Aberdeenshire for the third visit of the year, on a wet Wednesday, we drove north to Peterhead on the coast and then west to Aikey Brae. This is a small stone circle at the top of Parkhouse Hill just off the B9029 south of Old Deer.

It is reached through a densely wooded copse of pine trees and on a windless day was a place of extraordinary stillness and quiet. I paused several times to take photographs and the only sound I could hear was of fine rain dripping very occasionally through the pine trees.

The trees were packed tightly together in rows to form a dense canopy which shut out much of the light, preventing the growth of any underbrush on the forest floor. This resulted in a pleasing restricted colour palette of coppery browns, umber and acid green lichen.

The stone circle on the top of its hill is in a quiet and rural location and it was particularly atmospheric in the dank and misty afternoon light. It is a recumbent stone circle (i.e. its largest stone is lying down) and is described as ‘the most original, complete and “unimproved” stone circle in northern Aberdeenshire’.  It was built by a farming community some 4,000 years ago, probably to chart the passing of the seasons by plotting the lunar cycle.

In the drizzle, and with the stone damp and covered in lichen, it was easy to imagine that very different past.