Dyce Symbol Stones, Aberdeen

This is not quite the conventional view of these fascinating and enigmatic Pictish Symbol Stones, but but it does show the colour and the texture of three of the stones against the wall of the roofless old kirk in which they are displayed.

The setting has to be visited to be believed. Dyce Old Kirk stands almost on the edge of a cliff above the River Don, across the river from the small Aberdeenshire settlement of Cothall. To reach it, you turn up a narrow country lane that skirts round a quarry full of industrial plant and equipment before taking you to its dramatic clifftop location. In some ways it seems a world apart from the modern settlement of Dyce around the airport - especially in the howling gale and freezing rain in which we visited it around lunchtime today - but then you look around and immediately see the landing lights of Aberdeen Airport, and you remember the kirk is actually no more than a few hundred meters off the modern peripheral road that runs around the airport perimeter.