Tom's cairn, some standing stones and a long cairn!

[KatTai]

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Headed up to Finzean to take a walk up to Tom's Cairn and check out a long cairn marked on the map. It is somewhere I have passed countless times on the way to other walks, but never somewhere I stopped to explore but now we are looking at easier routes this looked like somewhere worth exploring.

The small parking area is easy to find near the war memorial and there is a signpost directing towards Tom's Cairn. The clear track leads up through the woods - this isn't actually on the OS map but it is along what seems to be a firebreak - to a gate and out onto open grassland. There was a sign about sheep, but there were no sheep out on the hill today. The clear grassy track leads across the gently rolling hills passing a memorial bench and heading all the way up to Tom's Cairn. Despite only being 310 metres, the views are pretty good from up here over to Clachnaben and Mount battock, Bennachie, Morven and a number of other smaller hills. The return is the same across the grassland surrounded by the autumn landscape and once back at the forest we took a narrower path to the left to alter the descent slightly. It was a good, if muddy in places, path that led through the forest and bracken to the standing stone where it re-joins the original outward track and the short distance back to the car park.

Watching the world go by.

Standing stone in the forest

Not done yet though! Crossing over the road there is an information panel about the standing stones around the parking area, and then we picked up a path just to the right of this that took us into the forest. The path follows a wall for a short distance and where it ends we picked up a fainter path to the left to head towards where the long cairn should be. It's shown as a track on the map, but in reality it is mostly a faint grassy track. The long cairn soon started to peek across at us from behind the trees, the paler stones used to build it standing out among the dark woods. It didn't seem we were getting any closer, but the path lead around to where the long cairn was. Fainter paths lead right around the cairn itself. Looking up the cairn online it doesn't seem to have been excavated at any point so it hasn't been accurately dated, so could date back to anytime between 4000BC to 2500BC!

Long Cairn

Having walked around the cairn, we continued on the narrow muddy path creating a little circular walk in the forest surrounding the cairn and, as the cairn started peaking through the trees at us again, a more recent relic was discovered just off a path leading back up to the cairn.

Some repair required...

Unfortunately I hadn't thought to pack Moss' tool kit so we couldn't get this car back on the road, but Moss found it very interesting to investigate! I'm guessing it has been in the forest for some time.

We'll be back on the road in no time!

Returning to the main path it wasn't long before we were back at the car park and took a look at the standing stones, one old but one - the Millennium Stone - modern only erected in 2000.

Millennium stone

Dardanus Stone

A thoroughly enjoyable walk with both historical interest and views!