By Bernie Bell

Pics by B&M Bell

I’ve previously written of our walk to the cairn on Wideford Hill, https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/07/31/bernie-bell-orkney-walks-with-stories-wideford-2/ , but just about any walk is different each time you do it. So I’ll take you there again…..

On Christmas Day, weather permitting, we take sandwiches and have a Christmas lunch at one of our favourite places, then have our big meal in the evening.  This Christmas Day dawned fine and sunny, and we decided to go to the cairn on Wideford Hill where we’d be up  and able to look about us.

Also, after our Solstice pilgrimage on the 21^st  https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/12/24/21-12-21/ , we felt like visiting another of the ancient sites of Orkney, where folk would also have marked the turning of the year and the light returning.

There is new signage at the cairn…….

……..which I like, as it’s not intrusive, gives information, and includes a ‘nod’ to the painting ‘American Gothic’  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gothic.  Farmers – Ancient and Modern.

The cairn is quietly impressive, as ever……

Someone had left a little flower in the entrance  – as an offering?

Mike then climbed down the ladder into the cairn…

….and made his own ‘offering’ in the form of toning – making sounds which resonated through the cairn, while I sat on the wall at the top of the cairn and looked around me and across the vale and bays to Cuween cairn over the way…

And ….listened.

While he was in there, he took some photos of the internal side chambers….

And of the light coming down the entrance passage way…….

Then back along the path as the sun set, and we wondered what might be happening in Maes Howe?

You may also like: Cuween Cairn – Wideford Hill