The Ring of Brodgar

Orkney Islands, north of Scotland: The Stones of Stenness.

The Watch Stone is a megalith standing 5.6 meters above the ground, just northwest and outside the henge of the Stones of Stenness.

The Watch Stone is at the south end of a short causeway between Loch Stenness and Loch Harray. Continue northwest past the Watch Stone and along the B 9055 road.

Megaliths in the yard, south of the Ring of Brodgar.

There are standing stones, tumuli, and cairns all over Orkney. Some people even have some Neolithic monuments in their yards!

The Ring of Brodgar soon comes into view on the horizon.

An outlying megalith well outside the Ring of Brodgar.

There are outlying standing stones and tumuli well outside this major henge.

The outer henge around the Ring of Brodgar.

The Ring of Brodgar is a megalithic circle surrounded by a henge of a ditch and earthen bank.

The stone circle is 104 meters in diameter, originally with 60 megaliths, standing 4.5 meters above ground level. Only 27 remain standing today.

The ditch is three meters deep and ten meters wide. It is estimated that the ditch alone required 80,000 man-hours to construct.

The Ring of Brodgar is generally thought to have been built between 2500 BC and 2000, so from 600 to 1100 years after the smaller circle of the Stones of Stenness.

The main stone circle of the Ring of Brodgar.

I got to talking to someone in a pub back in Stromness. They were working on a archaeological dig at the Ness of Brodgar, on the peninsula (almost an isthmus) between the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness.

They have found several buildings, some domestic and some ritual, including one structure 20 meters long by 11 meters wide. They have also discovered a large stone wall, some four meters wide. It appears to have crossed the narrow peninsula. One interpretation is that is formed a symbolic barrier between the ritual landscape of the Ring of Brodgar and the mundane world surrounding it.

Detail of a stone in the Ring of Brodgar.

Lichens grow on many of the megaliths.

Supposedly some of the Norse invaders in the 9th century imposed their theology on the monuments, referring to the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness as the Temple of the Sun and Temple of the Moon, respectively.

The more fanciful details of Norse ritual are thought to be just speculation of 18th and 19th century antiquarians. But some of the stones at the Ring of Brodgar have runic carvings.

The peninsula leading south to the Stones of Stenness is at center. Maeshowe would be visible between the two leftmost stones in this view.

These stones are nearly as unusually thin as those at the Stones of Stenness.

Salt Knowe, a tumulus just outside the Ring of Brodgar, the hills of Hoy visible in the distance.

The Salt Knowe mound is very close, maybe a hundred meters outside the outer ring of the henge toward the shore of Loch Stenness.

Those are the large hills on the island of Hoy in the distance, the highest points in Orkney.

Neolithic Orkney

Scotland and Orkney

People ascending Ben Nevis near Fort William in Scotland, the highest peak in the Scottish Highlands and in all of Britain.

An ascent of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Britain, overlooking Glen Nevis just outside Fort William.

The Road to the Isles, over 22 miles (37 km) overland across the high Scottish moors of Lochaber from Corrour Station to Fort William.

Crossing a 3-wire bridge while trekking through Glen Nevis and the Water of Nevis.

A trek through Glen Nevis and the Water of Nevis.

The Brealach Walk out of Pitlochry though the Highlands past megaliths.

The Brealach Walk out of Pitlochry though the southern Highlands and past some megaliths.

Neolithic dwellings exposed on the beach at Skara Brae in Orkney.

Skara Brae, a Neolithic village on Orkney.

Neolithic Orkney: Maeshowe, the Ring of Brodgar, the Stones of Stenness, the Knowe of Onston.

Neolithic Orkney: Maeshowe, the Ring of Brodgar, the Stones of Stenness, and the Knowe of Onston.

Geos and freestanding stone pillars along the sea cliffs of the west coast of Orkney.

West Coast Walk along the sea cliffs of Orkney's Mainland Coast.

Scapa Flow and World War II naval fortifications in Orkney.

Scapa Flow and the Churchill Barriers.

The sousterrain, an underground Pict dwelling in Orkney.

The Sousterrain, an underground Pictish dwelling in Orkney.

Church yard on the Isle of Iona in the Inner Hebrides islands off the coast of Scotland.

The Isle of Iona, and Oban and Mull.

The Grit Boxes of Scotland.

Ordnance Survey map of the peak of Ben Nevis.

Navigating with the UK National Grid system and Ordnance Survey maps.

England

Walking along Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland.	Stonehenge, Woodhenge, and Durrington Walls.	Avebury, with its stone circles, Silbury Hill, the West Kennet Long Barrow, the Avenue and numerous tumuli, a much better collection of megaliths and structures than Stonehenge!
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien at Oxford.	Dover's tunnels in the White Cliffs from World War II through the Cold War.	The Swingate Chain Home radar station near Dover.
The World War II glider base near Harwell, south of Oxford.	Bletchley Park, the secret installation where the British broke the German codes during World War II.	The Cabinet War Rooms, Churchill's emergency World War II government center underground in central London.
You could go to Lee Ho Fook's and get a big dish of beef chow mein.		What's the plumbing like?