Ring of Bookan

[purplecat]

As I have mentioned, I have fond memories of my time in the Arthurian society and our habit of going on "pilgrimages" which involved driving around the country in a minibus and visiting random ancient monuments, many of which were interesting only because they were called "Arthur's Ring" or "Arthur's Quoit" or some such. Given the plethora of "minor" neolithic sites on Orkney, I persuaded the adults in the party that we should spend a day on a neolithic road trip. The teenagers opted out of this clear idiocy.

Our first stop was the Ring of Bookan which is close by the far more impressive Ring of Brodgar. Bookan is a henge monument consisting of a bank and ditch and the remains of a chambered cairn in the centre. We got out of the car, wandered across a field, and found the ring with ease. There are also the Bookan Cairns to the southeast which the guide book described as a series of mounds and a substantial quarry, but our attempt to get to them was foiled by the existence of fences. We had more interesting things to see and there was a risk we could spend some time navigating around field edges and gates while trying to get to what were just "mounds" and so we went back to the car.