Clava cairns

There are about 50 of these cairns around Inverness, with these three at Balnuaran of Clava the most famous, so they're all called Clava cairns.

They were used for burial, with the entrance to the cairn oriented to the setting sun in midwinter, and each only held one or two bodies. They're about 4000 years old so the bodies are long gone; what's left are three enormous circles of rock, each surrounded by a ring of standing stones.

Especially on a sunny day, it just seems so incongruous. It's a quiet park at the end of a peaceful country road, with lawns and trees -- a place where you might bring the kids for a picnic. Well, except for those Bronze Age tombs.