Yesterday Jason Hoffman and I visited the egg-shaped Goldsworthy cairn in Dumfries and Galloway near the small village Penpont yesterday . Pronounced 'Penn- Punt'
Come to think of it, it does look like a giant american football
It was worth the drive from Edinburgh to see his millennium dry stone installation built just outside the village where Goldsworthy lives. It is built of a local red flat-bedded sandstone. I figured that the slightly slanted courses indicated that the stones (except for the jumpers) were laid mostly in one continuous spiral. A walk around it a couple of times confirmed my theory.
Eggsamining left overs.
Goldsworthy's familiar egg shape motif is actually an inevitable structural decision based on the need to load more weight into middle of an ascending corbelled dry laid sphere so that it is properly counterbalanced and thus far less likely to topple over.
I was only lying down trying to take this artsy shot looking upward at the cairn when Jason took a candid photo of me and immediately posted it on his facebook page claiming I was 'praying to the god of Goldsworthy' . Cheeky!
Anyway Jason tells me the tenth annual Tour of Britain cycle race goes right by here today and will be televised live in north America so if your watching maybe keep an eye out for the cairn in the background.
Eh hem, who looks like they're praying, Jason?
