Sea Views at Ballymeanoch

Viewshed (red) from the Ballymeanoch stone row. (Source: www.heywhatsthat.com)

An extremely restricted view towards the sea is available from the Ballymeanoch stone row. This sea glimpse is of the “closed” type with the Isle of Jura forming the upper part of this small sea triangle. The row like so many is situated in a position where a tiny part of the landscape panorama includes a sea view.  All of the surviving length of the row has this very restricted view, but if it was originally a little longer some part of it may originally have had no sea view. The building of stone rows on the very limit of sea view visibility is a frequent feature of the British alignments and supports the hypothesis that the row builders were sometimes interested in this particular visual treat. The sun would have set in this part of the sky around 23 February and 20 October and the sea triangle itself is likely to be most impressive around these times.

The closed sea triangle visible from Ballymeanoch stone alignment. (Source: Google Earth).