Weekend Snapshot challenge

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I found this great idea on Carver's blog. Please go look at her photos, they are lovely!


My photos were taken on Saturday. We took a drive up North over the Black Isle, over the Cromarty Firth and along the East coast to the village of
Shandwick. This is the view across the Moray Firth looking South East. It was a clear day, but the wind was COLD.

This next photo was leaving Shandwick, it was about 3:30 and starting to get a but twilight-ish, but I figured I'd try taking a photo anyway. I loved the way those trees stood out in the field.

This next one is the Shandwick stone of the graves. It's a Pictish standing stone from about the 8th or 9th century. It stands 10 foot (3m) tall and it enclosed now in a protective glass box. The box made taking photographs of the beautiful Pictish carvings very frustrating, but did make for some nice reflections of the clouds and sky. If you want a better idea of the actual carving designs you can find them here.

The Picts were a unique people who colonised the North-East of Scotland. It was once believed that they painted themselves blue, but more recent research proves it much more likely that they were covered in blue tattoos. The designs they carved onto their stones were probably similar to those they used for their tattoos. I was interested to see on TV recently that the Picts stayed Pagan long after the Western Gaels converted to Christianity. This stone as a cross on one side, so it was carved by Christian Picts, but many of their stones are of wonderfully decorative animals.

The view from the stone. Somewhere across that water is where we live. :-)