19th May 2024 - time flies

Stanton Drew Stone taken by LS

This morning is gorgeous, the honeysuckle outside the backdoor has broken into flower, there is something intrinsically beautiful about the shape of its cream and pink colouring.  I saw a bumble bee in its cup yesterday.  Nature is always producing the most vivid of pictures. A few days ago I spent ages looking for one of my terrible videos, I found two both with bees on it.  One is the ceanothus, its blue so cleverly crafted and the bee nest above in the old lock up building in the graveyard of Normanby church.  So as I am crap at editing, it will feature at the bottom with all its faults.

Yesterday I went to a meeting at the Folklore place about Pennystones, our local history person John Billingsley gave a talk on the game of throwing pennies. He also talked of the custom of stones, often set at the edge of a village which were called 'plague stones' Simply put, before you entered the village in the time of the Black death which ran rampant the hollowed out stone would have vinegar in which you dipped your hands.

But then he produced at the end a pretty crap bit of video, done with his phone of the sunset against a barrow up on Midgeley moor.  The sun seemed to climb the barrow, reach the summit, and then slowly disappear as it rolled down the  other side.

There are many things I miss from my old life and  the stones are one of them.  Sometimes I feel it is a desert here with hardly anything of note. Wiltshire spoiled me with its Avebury and Stonehenge.  Then of course Somerset with Stanton Drew Stone circle.

I miss Stoney Littleton Long barrow, West Kennett long barrow, even Silbury Hill and the great soft chalk downs of Wiltshire, and can quite understand why the landscape round West Yorkshire was so miserable to the prehistoric people ;)

The Cove stones outside the pub in Stanton Drew, though later identification says it may be the remains of a long barrow

Stanton Drew and its stones