Summer solstice

Solstice sunrise

The summer solstice and, for once, a sunny day. Having seen solstice sunrises when the sky, sea and shore looked like paint shop shade card - light grey, dark grey and brown - it was great to have a mid-summer day that lived up to its name.

In recognition of the day, I headed off to the Lammermuirs to seek out the stone circles that still dot the grouse moors. These enigmatic stones must have witnessed thousands of solstices and possibly been part of their celebration.

The Whitadder Water

A tramp up from the Whitadder took me towards Nine Stanes rig passing a circle of stones between two tumuli. The moors are defaced by the march of pylons across the landscape and the new invaders, the wind farms.

Stone circle and tumuli

Despite their presence, the bird life thrives, at least until someone with a gun comes and blows them out the sky or some gamekeeper decides that some others might pose a threat to those that are going to be blown out of the sky so they have to be eliminated first... and we think we live in a civilised society.

Today was different. The grouse were telling me to "go-back, go-back" and luring me away from their chicks with the broken wing trick. The oystercatchers were piping their shrill deterrence and the curlew were adding their eerie whoops. There were golden plover, lapwing, snipe, sky larks, pipits.... and me.

The Nine Stanes

I found the nine stones, now recumbent having been disturbed in the past by digging for non-existent treasure and wondered about the folk who erected them and the other circles on the rig, Why nine stones? There are a number of nine stone circles...and twelve stone ones. Were the numbers significant?

We will never know the reason for the stones. They probably had a calendrical and astronomical purpose so the solstice may well have featured n their use. Today, it did.

The stone circle  and tumuli from Nine Stanes rig