Thursday 27 July 2017

Places and pareidolia

I was delighted to hear on the Beeb yesterday that the village of Dull in Perthshire is to be twinned with Boring in Oregon. There is also a place in Australia called Bland. Now, this is a nice story in its own right: but it also gives me the opportunity to share this picture with you, taken last week in Northumberland.

Can you actually take a footpath to Tiptoe? Can Twizel be real? And isn't Grindon a character in Harry Potter? I suspect these might be fake names put up by the natives to confuse we visitors.

Mind you, I know that Duddo is real, because I've been there. It has a circle of standing stones that local tourism information leaflets describe as 'North Northumberland's equivalent to Stonehenge'. That might be over-egging it a bit, but on the day we went it was very misty-murky, and not a little spooky. There are five stones and geophys has revealed the sockets for two more.


 
The stones have been carbon dated at 4,200 years old and they are made of sandstone, so time and erosion have created some amazing images. Can you see the face - or even the face within the face?


Back to place names. Here in Northants we have Cogenhoe, which is pronounced 'cook-no' and the always amusing Tittyho. Can you do better?

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