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stone

Travel

Albania’s restored stone houses throw open the doors to visitors

A project to convert the country’s traditional kulla houses into guesthouses offers a true flavour of ancient hospitality in a part of the country almost untouched by tourism Sunlight pours through a tiny stone window, causing the wooden floorboards to creak as they warm up. The sound of sheep’s bells filters in from a passing flock. The scent of baking bread mingles with smoke from the previous evening’s fire. I wake up feeling I’ve been transported back to another time – but in reality I’m in modern-day Albania. I’m staying in a kulla, one of the traditional stone tower houses that are found

Travel

‘Looming stone towers like Maya temples’: a hike through Snowdonia’s slate country

A new trail in the national park traces the legacy of Welsh industry, while offering some of the UK’s finest riverside and mountain walks The vital moment comes a couple of hours into the walk. I drop down from a tussocky hill towards the village of Y Fron. There’s an abandoned slate-quarrying machine and a grassy track that suddenly emerges on the rim of a deep lake-filled crater. The water is the colour of an old bruise. Around the rim is a fence of lichen-crusty slates like gravestones. It’s a dark, brooding spectacle and totally unexpected. At that moment, I know that whoever designed this

Science

Stonehenge’s 6-ton altar stone may have traveled from Scotland by glacier

Stonehenge’s six-ton Altar Stone may have been carried from Scotland to Dogger Bank by glaciers before prehistoric people transported it hundreds of kilometers to Salisbury Plain. The possible multistage journey suggests remarkable organization and raises the possibility that the stone was valued long before it became part of Stonehenge.