Picture of the Week: #28

[taken during week running from 9/07 to 15/07]

Same photographer, different holiday...we're now in Northumberland on the Grand Tour of Catching Up With Photos, and what better way to celebrate the wonder that is Northumberland than with...a large lump of rock?

Ah, but not just any lump of rock. For this, you see, is a cup and ring marked stone. To paraphrase the Wikipedia article I just linked you to (which seems to be based largely on the terrifyingly detailed work done by one Stan Beckensall), these are various...well, large lumps of rock...with a whole bunch of prehistoric carvings on them. No-one has the faintest idea who made them, or for what purpose, or indeed precisely when - Bronze Age is about as close as most people seem to be able to get. This does make one wonder quite how the illustrious Mr. Beckensall has managed to spin the subject out into multiple books without descending into dramatised accounts of druids and so forth. For all I know, that's precisely what he has done.

Beckensall aside, the reason these rocks hold a special place in the hearts of my family is that this is the first time we've ever found one. This state of affairs is not for lack of effort on our part. We've been to Northumberland twice before, and I think both times we've seen the said lumps of rock labelled on the OS map (you can see some of them here if you're really interested) - however, neither of those times did our long searches through waist-deep damp bracken on the sides of gloomy windswept hills ever yield anything that looked remotely cup-and-ring shaped. This time, though, we went prepared, equipped both with a set of walkie-talkies and a printout from this very helpful, not to say obsessive, website.

And find them we did, allowing me to bring you the above photo. I sincerely hope that all those who see this will be grateful that they now also know nothing about why some Bronze Age vandal felt the need to carve circular grooves into a perfectly harmless piece if rock. It's a valuable service that I perform here.