A spiritual day

Day 20 

On the bus again, now to the Neolithic centre of the Orkneys;  

Maeshowe, Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Steness. 

The words evoke the misty past of one of the most extraordinary, evocative and without doubt spiritual place I have ever experienced.

Set in a massive basin, ringed by hills on all sides, the Neolithic people whose homes we visited yesterday, motivated by a spiritual vision, constructed with stone tools, before even the Bronze Age a massive series of complex meticulously engineered burial mounds and stone circles that stand today.

No signs of slave labour or of oppression, rather a spirit of cooperation and celebration straddling many years; truly civilised behaviour. Without the wheel they transported and erected huge slabs of stone reflecting the geological character of the many parts of these islands. 

Such was their skill that they were able to orientate the entrance of Maeshowe to allow the winter solstice sun to be focused on the principal bridal chamber.

Truly moved, I am in awe.

So too have been successive peoples, bronze age burial mounds constructed 500 years later than the original Neolithic structures surround the Ring of Brodgar, Crusaders and Norseman have carved cryptic runes on the stone faces inside Maeshowe.

This is a wonder worth struggling to find