An Dùbhlachd

Aaah… December.

The Gaelic for December is An Dùbhlachd. It means “the blackness”.

Maeshowe is a 5,000 year old Neolothic burial chamber in Orkney. The entrance to the chamber is through a passage 11m (36 ft) long and about 0.9m (3 ft) wide. The passage is aligned so that on the winter solstice the sun shines along the passage onto the rear wall of the burial chamber. 

That is quite something for a building 5,000 years old. It shows the importance of the winter solstice to our predecessors. 

A similar arrangement can be found at the Brú na Bóinne burial chamber in Ireland. It dates from the same period. They are older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids. 

I am privileged to have visited them (but not in December). 

Around here sunset was at 15.40 today. I went out for a walk in the early afternoon, in the hope of a Blip coming with the dying day. It worked. 

Well my friends, the message is a big thank you/mòran taing to Blip for getting me onto a deserted beach on a beautiful afternoon.   

Happy