On a low ridge above Loch Roag on Lewis stands a cross-shaped setting: a circle of thirteen stones with a monolith 4.8 metres tall near the middle, shaped rather like a ship’s rudder, and five rows radiating out from it. Set up between 2900 and 2600 BC, so older than the sarsens at Stonehenge, with ceremonial use continuing through the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Alexander Thom and Gerald Hawkins argued it worked as a lunar observatory tied to the 18.6 year standstill cycle; the counter-argument is that in a setting with this many stones several alignments will exist by chance, and millennia of weathering make certainty impossible. Both positions are worth knowing before you go. Historic Environment Scotland manages it and the local community trust Urras Nan Tursachan runs the visitor centre.
Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland
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