1) Old Keig.

Well, it was wet!.. The drive there was good, nice countryside, lots of up and downs and twists and turns. Ros did the navigating and we found Keig easily...

	It was a short walk down to the stones from where we left the cars. Only one barbed wire fence to get over. Walking down through the old trees I didn't know what to expect and when I got there I didn't feel much.
The stones felt like they were asleep. When I put my hand on the stones, all I could feel was an ever so slow pendulumn motion below the ground.. Mind youI I hadn't found my connection with the stones yet..
		The weather wasn't helping either.. I didn't feel cold but I was getting damp and I was keen to move on..

Dave had stuff to do so we said we'd meet up with him at the Druidstone.

Druidstone.

Now this was a sad one... We followed Dave's instructions and found the right farm and the weather britghtened up too, but Dave wasn't there. There wasn't anyone at the farm house either, Oliver checked. So off we all went in search of the stones... It was a very strange place. The white farm house there had been modernised and was built down in a little dip, right in the middle of nowhere. Pine forrest behind and hills all around. It had a great view, right down the valley. It overlooked a big square hole in the ground that was full of water. Maybe it was small reservouir or something, it looked fishable though. and was big enough to have a bit of boat house shelter thing at the house end... and if that wasn't odd enough, there was a red phone box standing to the lefthand side of it. Great! .....Salvidor Dali's been here, I thought. It was all very surreal.

Two gates, one barbed wire fence and a long trudge down the side of a muddy field and we could see the little island where the stones were. It was just a little way into newly planted field. There was also an old abandoned cottage close by. That cottage had a view to die for... way, way off down the valley. Neat, but no access..

From the side of the field we could just see one standing stone.

We cut across the shortest part of the field and on to the island. Something was wrong here... One of the trees looked like it had been struck by lightning. The main branch had exploded halfway up, by the look of it. That didn't explain the other two burnt patches though. Nor the fact that some stones had been piled up against one of larger stones... nor that the only standing stone had been blackend by a fire that was set at its base... Not a happy place at all.

We all pottered about for a bit waiting on Dave show up. Me and Grahame explored the old cottage to have a smoke break. Grahame dowsed the corner of the cottage which fallen down and found a whopper of a line coming from the circle and passing right through the corner of the building.

Dave eventually appeared and was wee bit shocked at the state of the site. The last time he was there everything had been fine. He took a few pictures for a report he would send in, and he checked under the standing stone for some crystals he knew were there... and off we went for lunch at "Carriages" in Insch. Insch is just a couple of miles from Dunideer. (The Glastonbury Tor of the north.. more on this later)

Lunch turned out to be eventful. First was the food was fantastic - the "Cullen Skink" was fabulous. The bar manager told me that it was made by a guy who comes down from Fort William. That might have been a story for the tourists, but it was really good. Cullen Skink is soup made with smoked haddock, potatoes, onions and cream. M'mmmm. You can buy it in Tescos nowadays and I'd recommend you try it... it's made by Baxters in Aberdeenshire.

On the way out of the pub me and Dave got side tracked by a drunk local who insisted that we hear his life story. He had a stone circle in his back garden down in Keig and wanted to bend the ear of an archeologist for a while. Eventually Dave broke free and we met up with the others at Tomnaverie. We got lost several times on the way which was good going for Dave who knows the area well. He worked on the restoration of Tomnaverie.

We stopped briefly at the Culsh Earth House. The darkness was complete and it felt very sweet and calm. I didn't know that the rest of the group had been there an hour before and had been toning. Good work guy's it felt lovely!

Tomnaverie

It was getting late by the time Dave and I got to Tomnaverie. It was windy and cold and the others had been waiting a long time. They were talking abut going back to the cars and maybe checking out a sunset alignment somewhere else. So I had the site to myself for quite a while.

It was much smaller than I expected... It was buzzy, and alive, and it was right on the edge of an old quarry which is now being filled in, thankfully. I had heard about the site from others before I got there but I didn't expect it to be right on the edge.

It was in a wild spot too, with 360 degree panaramic views. The recumbent and flankers are special, they had a steady but powerful presence and were comfortable to stand with. The other stones in the ring were smaller than I'd imagined and the site was much more open than the photos I'd seen had suggested. A nice site that was still alive. This was what I was expecting of the circles in Scotland and it felt good.

Apparently it was Kieller of Avebury fame who saved the site. He was having tea with the local Lord one day, and told him the quarrymen were ruining his view. Work stopped immediately in the quarry.

Dave was full of neat stories like this. He was a great guide and a good source of whacky debating for some of us. Being shot down by an over educated accademic is not one of my favorite sports, so I kept to just asking questions when I needed to, but Jon and Oliver had some good run-ins with Dave, which I'm sure they all enjoyed.

Dave loves what he does, that's obvious and his stuff about ring cairns was really interesting. He made me realise that these monuments were strikingly colourfull in their day. On one trip I came across a pink sandstone boulder which hadn't been out of the ground for long and was the most vivid salmon pink/strawberry ice cream colour. If I could have put it in my pocket I would have.

A great day out....

To be continued.........

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