If there was one thing I hadn’t expected on my Scottish tour, it was the Callanish Stones. I went to see them a lark after reading about them on a list of things to do whilst on the Isle of Lewis.
They were fascinating! Huge, rough, and not at all like Stonehenge except for the basic “upright rocks in the middle of nowhere” theme.
The textures of the Lewisian Gneiss were beautiful and I wandered around and through them over and over, looking for ways to capture the experience with the camera.
There’s a stone circle around a huge central stone, standing 4.8 meters high, and then some other stones in straight lines outside the circle. No one knows the original purpose of the stones, so guesses abound and you can make your own, if you like.
One thing is certain: they are old. The stones were placed here between 2900 and 2600 BC. While the stone is local, the effort to hew and drag and place them must have been enormous for the Neolithic (new Stone Age) people that created this place.
I found myself in awe of the whole place, and it was hard to leave it. If there is magic here, and some say so, then it cast its spell on me for sure.
We are everyday robots on your phones
in the process of getting home
Looking like standing stones
Out there on our own
Damon Albarn
There were actually people visiting, but I waited until they were hidden by stones to take a photo…
Intriguing and so alone.
Those are gorgeous stones – makes me want to go there