A couple of weeks ago I was looking around for a hotel somewhere in the Highlands, for Abi and me to spend a weekend away. The booking sites showed some interesting offers in Nairn. I don’t remember ever being in Nairn before, so I pulled up a map and starting scrolling around to see what’s there, and what’s nearby. My eye fell quickly fell on ain interesting-looking location nearby: the Barevan Lifting Stone.
Google Maps lists this as a “tourist attraction”, and has a link to the Barevan stone’s page on LiftingStones.org. I had no idea that lifting stones were a thing! According to the site:
Like other traditional lifting stones, the five stages of lift are used here:
- 1. Break the ground (put wind beneath the stone)
- 2. Bring the stone to waist height
- 3. Bring the stone to the chest
- 4. Bring the stone to the shoulder
- 5. Press the stone overhead
LiftingStones.org is a lovely web site dedicated to documenting these lifting stones and their histories. There are stones all around the world, although most of them seem to be concentrated in the British Isles. The site is a classic piece of the good old-fashioned web: one person (Dave Brown) has staked out a topic for themselves, and they’re going to build the best damn resource you can find for this niche. Are you going to get a new article every day? No. Are you going to get a fascinating tidbit a couple of times a year, well-researched, and accompanied by cool photos? Absolutely.
The Barevan stone weighs 105kg. Yeah…no. Not trying that. In the end we booked a hotel elsewhere, and there is another pair of stones nearby (the Auchernack Stones: 100kg and 130kg). I’m not going to try them either, but we might pop round and have a look.