Mary McAndrew

This hike was such an adventure that I’ll never forget! It was long and had so many great views that I have quite a few photos to share with you before you see my sketch and watercolor painting at the end.

Hike up the valley

First we parked the car near an old Medieval church that in itself is very interesting and I’d like to go back to explore it and it’s graveyard with old stones. We hiked up this valley along all those pine trees you see…past all those white dots, those are sheep!

The tough looking sheep closed in on us

I’ll be a little silly here and tell you when we walked past these sheep, they kept coming closer and closer like they were ganging up on us. It’s my silly side that thinks they look like thugs in tight wool sweaters, not very attractive sheep! The one who doesn’t have to short pig-like look is a different breed, he must be wondering what he’s doing with all those thugs! haha.

The hill we need to climb

We passed the sheep and went up a very gentle sloping hill, but it was huge so it took us awhile. It may look all sunny and pretty but it was really cold and extremely windy that day.  You can see the beautiful line of Scotch pines up on the hill, that’s where we’re headed to the ring fort.

Old walls of the Celtic Ring Fort

Well we made it up, the hill seemed to never have a top to it…we walked and walked but enjoyed the views. If you look at the photo above you’ll see a mound of dirt with grass on it, looks like a dune at the ocean, and there’s a spot you can walk through. That’s the Celtic Ring Fort entrance and the mounds are the walls, they used to be much taller and had deep ditches dug all around like a moat for protection. It’s such a huge site, it’s hard to imagine the layout of the fort, but if you look at it on Google Earth it’s really cool to see the image of the rings from above.

Steep hillside defense of the ring fort

This is the view off the front of the hill fort, it’s a very steep hillside which would have given them protection from enemies. At the top of the hill you can just see several mounds of dirt, those are remains of the walls.

First stone we found

Now this is the best part, there is ancient rock art on the stones found around this site. These were carved around 3,000 – 4,000 years ago by the ancient Celtic people who made the hillfort. They are generally called ‘Cup and Ring Marks’, the ones above are ring marks. It’s so beautiful to see the symetrical designs carved into the rocks but they are so worn with age and covered with lichens that they just look so natural.

I'm measuring the rings with my sketchbook

Here I’m showing how I use the ruler I drew on the back of my homemade sketchbook to measure one of the rings circumferences.

This is the larger stone on Old Bewick

This is the second rock we found and probably very photographed by hikers. If you do an image search for “Old Bewick Rock Art” you’ll come up with a lot of interesting stuff.

Drawing rings

Here I’m sketching some of the rings of the second rock, gosh it was really cold, if you could only imagine it was hard to stand still because the wind was blowing on me so hard!

Sketch of the rings

Here’s the sketches of ring marks. I tried to hold my pencil lightly and used the side of the tip so I could sort of lightly scribble the forms and build up darks as I went.

Drawing the line of 'cup' marks

Just as we were getting ready to leave I looked back at the huge stone and noticed (with my keenly trained nature sketching eyes!!) the little ‘cup’ marks along the front of the stone.

Old Bewick field sketch

I had to go back, even though we were tired and ready to go, I sat and did a quick pen sketch with permanent ink of the outline and basic cracks.I’m just getting used to using my new homemade sketchbook and I like that I can draw across two pages instead of having a spiral in the way.

Painting of Old Bewick Rock

This is the finished painting of Old Bewick Rock. Once I get home I only have my laptop to look at for reference from photos I take. As I now had time to sit in a warm house with a hot cup of tea I could see where I was a bit ‘off’ with my cracks and added maybe two extra cups marks! But it’s a field sketch, no big deal. So I had fun painting it with watercolors and you can see I left color testing notes in the upper right corner. While I sat there I did note the direction I was facing with my compass and wrote it on my paper.

I hope you enjoyed coming on a great hike with me, I’m inspired to study more of the numerous ‘rock art’ sites all around Northumberland and do some paintings.

I thought I should add a note here about the ancient sites like this, in case you ever visit one please remember they are irreplaceable. Gary and I talked about how soft the sandstone is and crumbles very easy if you just touch it. It’s my opinion that you shouldn’t really touch it too much or especially do rubbings on paper, I think it’s too much abrasion for the stone. Please never climb on it and encourage others to consider it’s delicacy too. Thanks!