{"id":5678,"date":"2025-10-04T22:16:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T20:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/?p=5678"},"modified":"2025-10-04T22:16:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T20:16:26","slug":"lifting-stones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2025\/10\/04\/lifting-stones\/","title":{"rendered":"Lifting stones"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Location of the Barevan Lifting Stone, near Nairn.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Google Maps lists this as a “tourist attraction”, and has a link to the Barevan stone’s page on LiftingStones.org<\/a>. I had no idea that lifting stones were a thing! According to the site:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Like other traditional lifting stones, the five stages of lift are used here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. 1. Break the ground (put wind beneath the stone)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. 2. Bring the stone to waist height<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. 3. Bring the stone to the chest<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. 4. Bring the stone to the shoulder<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. 5. Press the stone overhead<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    LiftingStones.org<\/a> is a lovely web site dedicated to documenting these lifting stones and their histories. There are stones all around the world<\/a>, 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<\/a>) 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<\/a>? Absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Barevan stone weighs 105kg<\/em>. Yeah…no. Not trying that. In the end we booked a hotel elsewhere, and there is<\/em> another pair of stones nearby (the Auchernack Stones: 100kg and 130kg<\/a>). I’m not going to try them either, but we might<\/em> pop round and have a look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    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 … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “Lifting stones”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1977,1979,1291,1978,1222],"class_list":["post-5678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-lifting","tag-rocks","tag-scotland","tag-stones","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5680,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5678\/revisions\/5680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}