You can’t miss it!

Oh yes we could and we did!

As I was looking at an OS map, in order to find possible access to the River Eamont, I saw a Standing Stone marked at Skirsgill, near Penrith. So, being me, I just had to find it. We tried last week and failed. The problem is that it has not been recorded recently and the only directions for finding it that exist involve reference to buildings on the Skirsgill Industrial Park that were once used by Lilliput Lane, the company that manufactured miniature models of quaint old English cottages, and they left the place a number of years ago.
 
So today, with the OS reference numbers to hand, we tried again. We parked and walked about in the area where it ought to have been – no luck. People had said it was rather overgrown, so we assumed it was hiding in the undergrowth somewhere. We couldn’t find it. I then saw a guy working in one of the buildings and he told us where it was and said: ‘You can’t miss it!’
 
And there it was – a huge slab of stone and not hidden at all – in fact we had driven past, walked past, walked past again . . . and missed it!
 
It is an impressive Bronze Age block of granite, almost 2 metres high.  It is thought that this could be the only one remaining of an avenue of such stones, marking the way to the Eamont River, or even to Mayburgh Henge, which is not so far away.  At least it looks as if it is being cared for now, which was not the case when people had found it previously.