Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

A tall, weathered standing stone, MacLeod's Stone, rises at an angle from a grassy, rolling landscape under a clear blue sky. In the background, a calm sea stretches towards distant, undulating hills of the island of Taransay. The foreground features scattered smaller rocks and patches of white wildflowers.

Clach Mhic Leoid

A striking silhouette of MacLeod's Stone stands against a vibrant sunset. The sky is a gradient of deep blue at the top, transitioning to fiery orange and yellow near the horizon, with wisps of pink and orange clouds stretching across. The standing stone, dark and imposing, is angled slightly, with its base surrounded by smaller, shadowed rocks. The sea reflects the fading light in the background, with the dark outlines of distant land visible across it. The immediate foreground is a grassy slope, mostly in shadow.
How many generations have sat in this very spot, watching the sun slip below the horizon?

Clach Mhic Leoid, or the Macleod Stone, stands alone on the headland of Nisa-bost, overlooking the Sound of Taransay. It may be all that remains of a once-great stone circle. This spot has drawn human attention for millennia; artefacts from every age have turned up nearby. One survey even hints at the buried remains of an Iron Age structure beneath the sandy rise between the stone and the sea1Clach Mhic Leoid. Canmore ID 10532 http://canmore.org.uk/site/105322Rivett, Mary Macleod. The Outer Hebrides: A Historical Guide.Birlinn Ltd. 2021..

The stone rises about three metres, streaked with quartz and feldspar, though the lichen makes you work to see it. Archaeologists say its base is ringed with packing stones. A pair of upright slabs once flanked it, but they seem to have disappeared beneath the shifting sand sometime after the early 20th century. Some suspect a burial cairn once stood here too. Two Viking graves have already been uncovered, the result of wind and rain erosion, raising the possibility of a small cemetery from that period3Traigh Iar Grave. Canmore ID 261433 http://canmore.org.uk/site/261433.

Whether that is true or not remains buried with the rest—only a proper dig will tell.

Posted

in

,

by

Fhithich

Tags: