Probing the past

On the hottest day of the year so far, I was in the amazing Kilmartin Glen, home to people who regarded this spot, at Nether Largie South, as a sacred place where they first built this massive tomb between 5,600 and 5, 500 years ago. A few generations later, in the Early Bronze Age, they remodelled the tomb, converting it into a circular cairn like the others built along the valley bottom. Two stone graves, or 'cists', containing the remains of important people were added.

I've taken so many photos of ancient standing stones and circular cairns this day that I had to choose one; you will have to picture a group of about a dozen people following a guide under the increasingly hot sun while discussing and reflecting upon the different attitudes to life and death then - when easy contiguity of the living with the dead was replaced over time by the idea that the dead should be well-hidden away from the living, whose attitudes to life changed with the emergence of power among themselves.

We arrived in the village of Kilmartin for our picnic lunch on the green before heading off again, to take in another, later cairn and then visit a 16th century ruined castle built for the first reformed Bishop of The Isles. I climbed with my friend Paddy and her crazy collie Hoy to the ramparts to see the view of the glen surrounded by hills whose outline was reminiscent of hills in Zimbabwe, under the hot blue sky, after which we returned to the village pub for a drink before the drive home.

This fantastic day didn't end fantastically for me, sadly - too much sun/heat/exhaustion/dehydration meant I didn't write this on the day, but I'm here, more or less recovered, thinking of lunch on Tuesday.

And it's still hot (25ºC according to my watch) and worryingly dry ...