By Bernie Bell
Looking through our old photo albums for the pictures of Cumbrae… https://theorkneynews.scot/2022/03/30/cumbrae-memories/
I came across photos of our holiday in Cornwall in 1995 and some archaeological sites which I thought folk might like to see pictures of – some of which can be connected with Orkney archaeology – kind of.
There’s Chysauster Iron Age/Romano-British village …
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/chysauster-ancient-village/
According to English Heritage, it contains a fougou – aka a souterrain..….. https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/09/07/the-gnarly-old-question-of-souterrains/
Unfortunately my strongest memory of this site is of a group of school children – aged about 10/11 led by a teacher, who divided them up into ‘Romans’ and ‘Britons’ and encouraged them to have a, very noisy, ‘battle’. All wrong for the site historically, but that’s what they were being taught, whilst making a devil of a racket which the other people visiting the site had to endure, or leave. ‘Nuff said.
Seeing our pic of Lanyon Quoit ….
http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/lanyon.htm
….reminded me of Colin Richards question ‘When is a dolmen not a dolmen? https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/10/05/when-is-a-dolmen-not-a-dolmen/
And – one of my favourite places on that holiday – Men an Tol ..
https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=111
We each went through the hole and round and back three times. I always go clockwise – with the sun. For some unknown reason, this time I went anti-clockwise – didn’t realise I’d done it until I’d …done it. Maybe The Fates decreed it to be so. I didn’t notice any major bad luck following on from this visit.
And…definitely a big favourite of mine – the labyrinth carvings at Rocky Valley…
A friend drew a copy of one of these carvings for me which I use as my letter-head. The maze/labyrinth idea has been inspirational for many thousands of years, however old or young the Rocky Valley carvings might be…
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