Another fine cairn you have dragged me to..

Today surprisingly I spent the morning on Baleshare - a very black and white morning in many ways. Huge tides had crossed over the shingle bar protecting the machair and worse are predicted tonight. Whilst I was gadding about the forester finished her business and as a reward she got to go out on the moor in the afternoon on a cairn chase.
When I say moor the word bog might be a better description. Either way we got to two impressive chambered cairns from the Neolithic period - c4000 years ago. Both had been treated as a source of free stone and were surrounded by low stone shelters - shielings is the local word. That said the stones that remained still gave an idea of what impressive - and labour intensive to build - monuments these were.
The lichen encrusted stone you can see is the tallest stone at the western end of the Stiaraval chambered cairn or a Neolithic chambered cairn of the Hebridean passage grave type to give it its full description. More details can be found on the hugely impressive Canmore website of all archaeological remains in Scotland.