#Camster Cairns

[thesilicontribesman]

The Winter Sun Enters The Neolithic Burial Chambers Of Camster Cairns, Caithness, Scotland

[nosasblog]

Carn Glas Chambered Cairns and Essich Farm, Inverness: An Interim Report

[reiseheidi]

Grey Cairns of Camster

Scotland’s 5000 years old Neolithic chambered cairns

[aclouddigger]

-New Beeginning- Camster Cairns, Scotland. September 2019.

Pictures from the last decade. 1/31

New day, new year, new decade. A new Calendrier de l’Après, post Advent Calendar to step into 2020, being more me than I ever was. 

It should only be pictures from 2019 this time and here’s to (as always) more photography in my life.

Thank you for watching my work, from the bottom of my heart.

-Anouck

[thetravelscout]

Day three of cramming as much of the Highlands as possible. I awoke with the birdies and dragged myself to the Kia. Six hours of driving and ten hours of adventuring sure makes for a weary traveler. Repeat steps from the last two days: fuel up and Redbull. Today the goal was to drive to John O’Groats the northernmost point of mainland United Kingdom. I didn’t have anything planned in John O’Groats. I was more interested in the road. The windy A9 would merge into the two-lane coastal A99. I found a map that showed some typical, historical spots and with some help from Atlas Obscura I was rearing to have a busy day.  The day was warm and sunny. Thank goodness, the weather held for my entire trip!

Dunrobin Castle

As I approached Dunrobin Castle the plan was to breeze through the one of many stops. I ended up spending about two hours completely entranced by Andy Hughes and his birds of prey. Falconry dates to 1700 BC in the Middle East. The hunting art involves a hunter using a trained bird of prey to kill and retrieve game such as rabbit, pheasant or other species of bird. Falconry didn’t reach Europe until about 900AD. I’m positive this guy has full on conversations with his birds. Which inevitably happens the closer relationship to a pet. Been there.  I appreciated the birds but, the connection between handler and animal was spectacular to witness. Coming from an equestrian background, I understand herd mentality and the vital balance between being the alpha and gentleness. It’s a slightly different with predators. Their relationship is built on equality and trust. Teamwork is key since the solitary hunter will do what is best for itself. The flock (I suppose?) consisted of about ten falcons and two owls. Zooming around the athletic birds demonstrated their trade by ‘killing’ lures. Dunrobin castle is an excellent stop. The inside of the castle was in pristine condition and had a French flair going. It is home to the Earl of Sutherland and Clan Sutherland.

I don’t think he had his coffee yet…

This is my comrade Cedar – an Eagle Owl. It’s his job to hang out at Dunrobin Castle and hunt rabbits. Occasionally take some pictures with girls obsessed with owls. He works with the aviary and Falconry expert Andy Hughes to hunt as well as teach conservation to travelers who pass through. As a person who also works with animals it’s heartwarming to see someone who has such an intense bond with the creatures they care for.

2. Carn Liath Broch

Less than a mile down the road is Carn Liath Broch.

A broch is an Iron Age drystone structure that is only found in Scotland.

A broch is typically round and were used as either housing or defensive purposes – archaeologists can’t agree. It’s a splendid example, if ruins and historic archaeology are your fancy. Travelers only need about ten minutes to check it out.  I took the opportunity to have a snack and relax in the sun. The structure over-looks a pasture and the ocean. I had the place to myself so it was delightfully silent.

3. The Grey Cairns of Camster

The Grey Cairns of Camster are some of the oldest structures in Scotland. Clocking in at 5,000 years longstanding the stone constructions show us modern folks perfect examples of round cairns and long cairns. Cairns are typically used as burial chambers. Upon excavation in the late 19th century the long cairn produced several human skeletons untouched, but, in the round cairn archaeologists found human and animal bones which were all burned. The two human skeletons were incomplete both missing their legs. Archaeologists presume that the round cairn was used for ritual. Guess which cairn was open for exploration?  Crawl on your hands and knees or squat walk through a ten-foot tunnel into the round cairn’s antechamber. The tunnel entrance was probably 3X2 and pitch black so, seriously not for the claustrophobic. The inner chamber filtered in light through a slight hole in the top of the structure.

Yeah… I climbed through this. Straight outta Indiana Jones.

4. Hill o’ Many Stanes

The next ancient site was the Hill o’ Many Stanes. The site confounds archaeologists as there no proof that the plot of land home to approximately 200 stones, arranged in 22 rows is an authentic ancient site. The straight lines and arrangement suggest that the site was a lunar chart. The Hill o’ Many Stanes is not exactly exciting, but, the mauve heather carpet along the hill makes for a unique view in contrast to the blue coastline.

5. Cairn o’ Get

Much like the cairns at Camster, Cairn o’Get sports a narrow entrance leading to a roomy antechamber. Cairn o’ Get is dissimilar to the other cairns as the top has fallen in. This site offers a peek into the structure without having to crawl on hands and knees to reach the center. To find Cairn o’ Get park along the lake and take about a mile and a half walk through some cow pastures. Don’t worry follow the back and white markers. It’s a quiet place far off the main A99. Take in the sound of a burn flowing through the waist high ferns. Be sure to stay on the paths beyond the pastures as the land is boggy and water saturated.

6. Old Wick Castle

The Old Wick Castle, lovingly called the “Old Man of Wick” sits on a gaunt, neck of land that juts into the sea. The bones of the castle date back to the 12th century and has some ties to early Norse visitors. There is not much left of the castle, but, it’s a great walk along the coast and a bit of an adrenaline kick peering over the cliff sides. The tower is surrounded by sheer drops on three sides.

The last castle I saw was from afar. Sad times. It was on private land!

Other honorable mentions that I missed, but wanted to see:

The Yarrow Trail

Whaligoe Steps

Sinclair & Girnigoe Castle

Bucholie Castle

See? Three days is not enough time… If you have been following along the past three posts you will know that I had three AMAZING action packed days. I didn’t even scratch the surface of the extensive hiking trails and historical castles and archaeology sites. I think I might spend a month in the north next time!

Missed the other posts? Here ya go:

Glasgow to Inverness – Magic in the Rains

Inverness to Skye – Fairies, James Bond & Neolithic Chambers

Your Cobweb Clearer, Kate

  This is the final leg of my Scotland Highlands roadtrip! Enjoy falcons, cairns and more! Day three of cramming as much of the Highlands as possible. I awoke with the birdies and dragged myself to the Kia.

[absalomabsalom]

Deleuze, Art, Cairns

In his essay on art, “What Children Say,” one becomes engrossed by Deleuze’s argument on the nature of art, the manner in which he opens up the concept by comparing it to the mappings of intensive space by children, by his invocations of Little Hans and to Deligny’s autistic children as the paradigmatic cases of artistic creation. It is, as his wont, subversive and brilliant, and this engrossment progresses apace until, right at the moment of giving a definition of art, one runs into a brick wall—or rather, a stone cairn:

Art is defined, then, as an impersonal process in which the work is composed somewhat like a cairn, with stones carried in by different voyagers and beings in becoming (rather than ghosts) [devenants plutôt que revenants] that may or may not depend on a single author. (#)

It is a typical Deleuzian moment, a typical philosophical moment even. Just as one is about to receive a definition, a statement that clarifies and distills the journey through the text, one is held up short, puzzled and perplexed: art is a cairn? Why? How? What is the connection to mappings and intensities, to children and ghosts? 

These moments, though frustrating, are productive; they remind us to not have masters, to become beholden to no singular text. Yet, the mystery of the cairn remains, stubborn and opaque and tugging gently at the back of your mind every time you work on the concept of art, of Deleuze. A rather more than cursory round of research yielded nothing; following Deleuze’s footnotes, usually a winner, cross-referencing other works on Deleuze, even google books (at least when I first searched it) yielded nothing. Researching cairns, I puzzled through analogies such as the work of art is like a grave? a memorial? the upturned earth of a battle? They all resonated, but amounted to nothing. 

Nothing, that is, until I spoke with a colleague of mine whose family hails from Scotland. And he told me that the custom is, as one walks about the countryside, that you every time you pass a cairn, you pick up a rock and add it to the top of the cairn. This practice, the living, communal practice of the cairn, was the key. The cairn was not just an inert marker of the past, but a living relationship with the present; it was people interacting with their environment, creating their own history through a collective memory encoded not merely in the exchange of words, but the perpetual work of moving stones: the cairn as assemblage. 

The work of art is like a cairn because the work of art is not the object molded by the heroic subject of artistic creation, but an expression of the impersonal forces of accretion and collective pressure. The reference to ghosts also begins to make more sense; the work is not haunted per se, but the haecceities of the past interacting with the present; an impersonal, but non-metaphorical, exchange with the dead, indeed the creation of an assemblage that creates that past itself, but is also created by the subtle pressures it left behind, even over the span of hundreds or thousands of years: modern artists leaving their signatures on caves filled with prehistoric paintings. Cairns remain in a perpetual becoming; they may have a single author, but what defines them as works of art—what defines any work of art—is not the subjectivity of its origin, but the becoming which it produces. 

*Thanks to Calum Matheson at the University of Pittsburgh. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia contributor Otter (#)

[daenerysvan]

The Grey Cairns and Friends - Days 7 and 8

We had a quiet but colder night. Eager to get to our friends house up near Wick, we set off making one stop at the Grey Cairns of Camster.

Although these have been heavily reconstructed, they are well worth a visit as you can go into all three of them. Be warned -you will need to crawl!

After arriving at our friends new house, the day was still young so we went for a wander around some woods near Dunnet, Dunner beach and Dunnet Head lighthouse! From here, the Orkney's looked tantalising close... I aim to go there in a future visit!

The next morning we set off, with our friends to drive along the top of Scotland. Reaching first Smoo Cave.

 I then took them to the Balnakeil Craft village near Durness. Disappointingly this seemed to much quieter than when I had last visited in April of 2017. Then, it was at the beginning of the season and now, I am just past the end. Several of the cooler artists shops were closed. Coco Mountain however, that was most definitely open, in new premises,still at the Craft village and still serving delicious, albeit rather expensive, hot chocolate!

After tea in a very antiquated looking cafe near Durness, we said goodbye to our friends and I parked up for the night on a scrap of land overlooking the coast, near Durness.

[vanlifebot]

@JazyAtkinson: Day 2 #northcoast500 Camster Cairns- Whaligoe steps - John o' groats - Duncansby Head - Dunnet Head - Loch Eriboll… https://t.co/N6lEg6JNkz

from http://twitter.com/JazyAtkinson via IFTTT

[spcampbell-art]

North, there’s a hum in the earth.

Camster Cairns, Caithness, January 2015. 35mm.

[thesilicontribesman]

Grey Cairns of Camster Prehistoric Round Chambered Cairn Interior, Camster, Caithness, Scotland

[thesilicontribesman]

Grey Cairns of Camster Prehistoric Round Chambered Cairn Interior, Camster, Caithness, Scotland

[thesilicontribesman]

Grey Cairns of Camster Prehistoric Round Chambered Cairn Interior, Camster, Caithness, Scotland

[thesilicontribesman]

The Prehistoric Long Horned Cairn from The Grey Cairns of Camster, Caithness, Scotland

[thesilicontribesman]

The Grey Cairn of Camster Prehistoric Round Chambered Cairn, Camster, Caithness, Scotland

[thesilicontribesman]

'The Grey Cairns of Camster' Prehistoric Chambered Cairn Complex, Caithness, Scotland

[thesilicontribesman]

'The Grey Cairns of Camster' Prehistoric Round Chambered Cairn, Camster, Caithness, Scotland