Gavenie Braes Stone Circle

Friday, had a notion to be amongst ancient energies.  A useful day, ominously charcoal-blue-grey with cheek-rosying winds.  A walk to the local standing stones, feed the ducks on the way, return some stones picked up from the beach a few weeks ago.  (They had sparkled in the sunshine on the day, but realised, am over gathering beach-pebbles).

Fed more seagulls and crows than ducks, then swithered about carrying on up the hill to the stones.  Decided, so what if it pours, it will break the heaviness, and getting soaked only increases the pleasure of coming back to a warm home. 

Gavenie Braes are hill-fields, a working farm for centuries.  How much longer remains to be seen.  If I were a boomer farmer, I’d sell the farm to my heirs for £1.  Avoid losing everything to tax, scupper some 2030 dastardly globalist plan.  But that’s just me.

It’s a good time of year to go into fields, if they are the only access to ancient sites.  There is right of way in Scotland, but where there are crops or animals, that’s the farmer’s living; best come back another time.  There had been wheat in the field, now shorn, the hay baled.  Hadn’t twigged before, that farmers cut twice; once, the tops for the kernels, then a second cut for the hay-stalks.  The field was stubby (weed-control), goose-pooped (fertilised) and not too muddy.  Once ploughed, it would be too late to go. 

So, I went.  Hundreds of geese honking overhead, heron flying, weird light.  Mystical, triangulating views.

Ancient stones (4500-1500 BC), standing. 

Temple of Venus (1737), observing. 

Banff bridge (1779), connecting.

Plus, I can see my house (1764) from here.

Early evening, went to a Christmas event at a local shop, ‘Petal’.  Bought some raw black tourmaline. 

I have a cunning plan.

Images for this journal have been posted on Insta @purplehaze_journal

https://canmore.org.uk/site/18464/gavenie-braes

PETAL the store (@petalthestore)