These are the standing stones at Belwade Horse Farm which is a charity for neglected, abused, and/or unwanted horses. It’s near Aboyne which is about an hour south-west of Aberdeen, in the Cairngorms. We visited the place today with some friends.
I’m fascinated by these stone circles which are all over Scotland. This particular one is a megalithic stone circle which was supposedly built for astronomical purposes. It marks the dates of important Celtic festivals like the winter and summer solstice, acting like a calendar and predating Google’s calendar by thousands of years. These are not the original stones though. This particular one was re-built in 2013 by stones donated from the Invercauld Estate. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t travel through time when I put my hands on one of them.
The horse farm is really lovely and is well worth a visit if you’re in the area. The view from the cafe is magnificent and you can groom a pony and learn a lot about horses at the same time.
We didn’t get to see their Clydesdale, Digger, but there was a life-size portrait of him and I got a pic alongside it so you can see how big he is.
Yesterday we cycled to Newton Dee with some old friends from York and spent some time frolicking in the playground there. It was wonderful.
For dinner we went to Slains Castle, which is a converted church -> pub in central Aberdeen. The kids quite like it because it has a Dracula-inspired interior design but last night was particularly good because they got a free pool lesson from some very nice young fellows who were having a game near our table. Elizabeth wanted to arrange to meet them there again next Saturday but we talked her out of it. I can’t imagine they’d want to spend their Saturday evenings teaching kids to play pool.
What a great weekend.
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