Moss Farm Road Stone Circle

At the start of the farm track that crosses Machrie Moor on the west coast of Arran, about 650 m from the car park on the A841, a ring of boulders on the right looks like a stone circle but is in fact a Bronze Age ring cairn, used for burials. It was a low cairn of large boulders inside a ring of upright stones about 22 m across, with a stony bank outside. Seven uprights about 1.3 m tall still stand and five have fallen; the road and a fence cut through it, and centuries of stone robbing and dumping have taken their toll. It makes a fitting first stop on the way to the great stone circles of Machrie Moor, about another kilometre on, in a landscape used for ceremonies for more than 1,500 years, where timber circles were replaced by stone ones about 4,000 years ago. The track is easy but can be muddy after rain, so wear strong footwear.