Striding Arch

Today's the day ..................... to stride out

This is the first of Andy Goldsworthy's Striding Arches - a series of grand, self-supporting arches standing on hilltops surrounding the natural amphitheatre at Cairnhead, near Moniaive in Dumfriesshire.

Each arch stands just under four metres high, with a span of about seven metres, and consists of 31 blocks of hand-dressed red sandstone weighing approximately 27 tons.  Other arches made of Dumfriesshire sandstone by Goldsworthy stand in Canada, the United States and New Zealand, echoing the travels of emigrating Scots over the last 200 years or so.

Records show that people have lived and farmed in this glen for over 500 years.  At least six farming settlements once stood in the area around this byre.  Old farming methods relied on a system of cultivated strips surrounded by rough pasture grazed by cattle.  Families lived communally surviving by subsistence farming in a largely unenclosed countryside where rents to the landlords were paid in kind with labour or produce.
 
As well as the arch, the  letter carver, Pip Hall, has celebrated the generations of people who have lived and worked at the steading.  Names and dates have been incised into a stone bench.  The one shown below was particularly of interest to me because it was my father’s name.................