Well, we may have looked like we knew what we were doing most of the time, but we did have our moments. We had the map, the compass, the GPS. We even had Rupert’s Columbian Drug Baron Hat. It really should have been easy to make our way from Men-an-Tol across a short expanse of moorland to the 9 Maidens stone circle to the North. However, in the spirit of always making thing much more complicated than they really are, we took the scenic route. Actually, in this part of the world every route is a scenic route – but you know what I mean.
After a few unnecessary scrambles through acres of gorse and brambles we emerged close to what we thought must be the 9 Maidens stone circle. Nobody had bothered to tell us that it had been restored (slightly) and now numbered 11. Actually, turning up before the restoration wouldn’t have helped us much because then there were only 6 stones standing. Or when William Borlase first recorded it – because then there were 18 – out of an original 22! Clearly, the ’9 Maidens’ label is not so much an archaic folk memory as a verbal snapshot taken sometime in the last 200 years.
