Chris Dews (known on Ask as Waldorff and John o'Gaunt) author of the recently released The Druid and the Bracelet has just returned from Europe where he was researching his next book. He emailed me this morning about some stone circles he visited on Arran. They're not Stonehenge but you might find his email of interest.
I've been to Europe for a couple of weeks as you know, and saw lots of stone circles and cairns - amazing! There's a place on Arran called Machrie moor that has five, count'em, five stone circles as wells as several cairns, all within a mile or so - it must have been a place of great significance 3000 years ago. Maybe there's a place for Machrie moor in 'Dragons'.
One of the stones is set by itself, and is a phallic symbol, I'd
say. There's a corn grinding stone - broken so that it is no longer any use, its functionality a gift to the gods...It's an unbelievable place, and so few people know about it My sister (who is in a couple of the pics) has been camping on Arran for decades, and she had never been there. There's just a little sign on a little road to 'Machrie' and an empty parking lot. Then you walk half a mile to a cairn, then see a stone circle, so you walk to that, and suddenly, you're surrounded by stone circles! It's difficult to get the experience across - the stones themselves are mostly small - four feet high perhaps, although some are much taller.
As it has been there thousands of years, you can walk all over it, or over the cairns - I climbed into a chambered cairn in Kilmartin and looked around - no bodies I'm afraid...
