Journey to the North - Part 4

 Day 6 dawned bright and clear - my original intention had been to just head for home, but there were so many more stones to see, so we bought lunch from the supermarket (again) and headed up hill.

At this point I had a message from the AirBnB host to say she couldn't find her house keys, one check pockets later and I headed back down hill to return them  - told you I don't normally do the responsility part of going away! 

We headed up Heber's Ghyll which was a lovely walk, someone had taken the time to lay a dinosaur trail for children to follow too.

And onto the Swastika stone, the original (very hard to see) and a Victorian copy are both protected behind a barred fence.

The Sepulchre Stone 

Modern Art

Neolithic 'art' at hanging stones.

Another Stanza Stone - The Beck Stone, which was a challenge to find,  made a lovely place to sit and eat lunch by a babbling brook.

I was now burning away beautifully and it turns out that suncream and night cream tubes can look remarkably similar without reading glasses so I was just gently frying my skin rather than protecting it! 

But we walked on until mid-afternoon stone to stone across 5 miles before we parted and headed our seperate ways home.

Bearing in mind the health issues I have had this year and the general covid anst, this was a challenging trip but one that helped me to push boundaries and still come home more mentally relaxed than when I left.

So my Journey to the North for my Discovery Gold Award involved scrubbing toilets, sinks and showers, making tables, cleaning, laying out tents, making boxes. picking litter, walking up hills alone, and spending miles on the moor getting in touch with my neolithic roots.

I made new guiding friends, I extended my love of the north and learnt more about my neolithic ancestors - although I do think some of the more educated expert's interpretations of the stones are a bit off the mark.  I reckon a lot of these carvings are graffiti and nothing more, the drive of every person to leave some sort of mark on the world that means they are not forgotten.  You heard it here first ;)