Simon Constantine (Member no: 1028)
Rempstone Stone Circle
Best of all you have to discover the circle for yourself, pushing through fresh hazel sunshoots and wet ferns to trail from stone to stone.
It’s a rainy day in June, the last day of jubilee weekend so the towns are festooned in soggy union jacks and look like a Cold War Steve collage. It’s a welcome relief to head out into the countryside in search of my most familiar stone circle.
Ordinarily I visit around the winter solstice when the stones seem clear and undisturbed by bracken and brambles. Then the light dapples the stones but today it’s a different experience.
To get to the stones I have to surreptitiously crossover into a private conifer plantation. It’s only a small pocket of trees edging a large field used for sheep pasture. The rocks themselves could easily be missed or go unrecognised (if you aren’t part of the Stone Club!). Sourced from local sandstone they are a rich, iron-rust red and moistened with summer rain and quilted in vivid green moss.
I like to find shapes and faces in the stones and these have plenty of character. One lying like a prostrate man arriving at his pilgrimage point, another like a strange elongated Andean skulls. But best of all you have to discover the circle for yourself, pushing through fresh hazel sunshoots and wet ferns to trail from stone to stone. A few have visited before and trod a light path that bows round and there are piles of shells, foreign stones and flowers so I’m not the only one who likes to pop by.
Its a steep but short walk from here to 9 barrow down, a series of burial mounds that look out across the whole of Poole harbour to one side and the Purbeck ridge line down to the coast on the other. Not so far from here is the infamous Agglestone and I imagine all these sites hold a link to one another, along with the fact the road nearly touches the circle in its meandering from Corfe Castle to Studland peninsula. My trip is cut short as heavy rain arrives again but it’s been nice to be back to see these old friends.
