Sunkenkirk

Swineside Stone Circle (and extra)

I often worry about my sanity but I'm blaming it on Norman Nicholson today. I was drawn to head south-west by thoughts of the dazzle. I didn't get up with this intention but it has been a vague sense, like an aura, with the urge to go there  becoming steadily stronger. I've wanted to visit the circle for many years but normally when I get down this far I am drawn to go up Black Combe and this has been a short walk that I've meant to do but never got round to. Today though I knew I wasn't up to walking far having been feeling poorly for a while and still with a dodgy knee so off I went and .... what a spot ....

Norman Nicholson wrote a poem about the circle called 'The Megaliths' but it was on a wet day and just doesn't fit today's image and so I have included a different poem here that seemed more appropriate.

The Motion of the Earth - Norman Nicholson

A day with sky so wide,
So stripped of cloud, so scrubbed, so vacuumed free
Of dust, that you can see
The earth-line as a curve, can watch the blue
Wrap over the edge, looping round and under,
Making you wonder
Whether the dark has anywhere left to hide.
But the world is slipping away; the polished sky
Gives nothing to grip on; clicked from the knuckle
The marble rolls along the gutter of time -
Earth, star and galaxy
Shifting their place in space.
Noon, sunset, clouds, the equably varying weather,
The diffused light, the illusion of blue,
Conceal each hour a different constellation.
All things are new
Over the sun, but we,
Our eyes on our shoes, go staring
At the ashphalt, the gravel, the grass at the roadside, the door-
step, the doodles of snails, the crochet of mortar and lime,
Seeking the seeming familiar, though every stride
Takes us a thousand miles from where we were before.