Machrie Moor...

I’ve had a couple of days exploring the Isle of Arran; it’s fine… not weird like the Outer Hebrides. The road layout is very simple. A road goes around the coastline - you’re close to the water most of the way - and if, like me, you start and finish at Brodick, you’ll have covered about 55 miles. There’s another road that goes east-west across the middle, so the major roads form a figure of eight.

The weather has been fantastic - warm and sunny, with some photogenic cloud formations - and the light so bright that I’ve been shading my eyes. I was so taken with the standing stones and circles on Machrie Moor that I walked to see them twice. I’d seen them on my first trip to Arran, in the rain, so it was good to see them again in better light. The setting is a low plateau, and there isn’t just one stone circle, but half a dozen… as well as isolated standing stones and chambered cairns. Some of the stones are granite, others are red sandstone.

Why so many circles? To the untutored eye (mine) the site could have been where people learned how to erect stones. Or maybe an open-air showroom (“If you don’t like it in granite, and want something cheaper, we have this one in sandstone”)…