Later, climbing the hill path past the lovely Acharn falls, you can see the Munro I would’ve attempted that morning. Peeking out from between the clouds, Beinn Glhas (pronounced “ben glass”) still sported a few deposits of snow. I vowed to bag it next day. For now, though, more prehistory up the big hump. 20 minutes after passing a plunging burn, I arrived at the far less well-preserved leftovers of a stone circle so underreported it doesn’t even have a Wiki page yet. A few lines of spaced rock extend from the perimeter of the circle. Here on the ground it’s hard to discern, but it may look like a smaller, fainter version of Callanish, one of prehistoric Scotland’s greatest and hardest to reach treas- ures. Callanish’s shape from 200 feet overhead is that of a pregnant line drawing a la bathroom signs. Stonehenge, eat your heart out! Acharn’s rocky remnants are divided by a weirdly precise cleft in the hill, splitting the circle in half. There’s no gift shop guidebook or even a Historic Scotland plaque to explain. Nonetheless, the Spinal Tap soundtrack between the ears ascends to eleven.
Next: the eccentricity of the One Percent during the Age of Enlightenment! Just five minutes down the path. Did you know that it was de rigeur for fancy 18th-century landowners to construct a hermit- age, aka a hermit’s cave-home, on their property? Really. And the coolest lords employed hermits to dwell in them. Stupid? Yes. As stupid as NFTs? Maybe not. The Acharn hermitage cave is a T-shaped set of tunnels. (Watch your head; watch your step.) Its centre exits onto a million-dollar view of the dramatic Acharn plunging falls. Just below, the tourism board erected a bridge for hikers to take in even more gob-dropping vistas. Back at the foot of the hill near the car, I met a couple of locals tinkering with an old Land Rover. They’ve never heard of the stone circle — it’s not even 2 km up there! — but recommend the falls for a pleasant walk. DAY 3: Haar is a Scots word for a thick cloud that descends onto coastal ground, sometimes for days, and makes you worry that a werewolf’s about
STONE CIRCLE REMAINS, ACHRAN
HERMIT’S CAVE
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