Clava Cairns

I've had a lovely day trip out today to celebrate a friend's Birthday.  We are all big fans of "Outlander" after starting the series of books written by Diana Gabaldon for our bookclub.  If you haven't heard of it, its a passionate historical love story with a supernatural element and is set in the Highlands of Scotland.

To the East of Inverness, past Culloden battlefield which is where Bonnie Prince Charlie led the Jacobite army against the English in 1746, there is this ancient site of standing stones and burial cairns.

Its been a crisp, cold autumn day and it was nice to walk through the leaves, their crunch being the only sound in the quietness.  It wasn't eerie, just peaceful.

Amazing to think that these stones were laid here thousands of years ago.

We had a while to walk around, just the three of us, each of us touching some of the standing stones.  Apparently this place was where the author got her inspiration for "Claire to step back in time through the standing stone where she meets her love Jamie" .

There are three burial cairns here.  You can walk inside two of them and they are each encircled by their stones.

On the shortest day of the year, the light streams up the passageways to the centre of the cairns.  You can see a bit of sunlight inside in my photo today.


Two stones or split in two I wonder.  Its the only one like this.

This is called the Kerb cairn, built approx 1000 years after the other cairns.


Carbon dating has put these cairns at approx 2000 years BC.

My friend so enjoyed her trip here and we were lucky to have the place to ourselves for a little while.  In the Summer it is a very popular visitor attraction, probably more so now its connected to the books.
If you haven't heard of Outlander check it out.  Its full of the breathtaking landscapes and history of Scotland and we are lucky enough to live in this area.

Terri X

Comments

  1. mamasmercantileOctober 31, 2017 at 9:16 AM

    What a great place to visit with so much history and beauty.

    ReplyDelete

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