Birmingham's Brilliant Boulders

These are the plaques on some of the erratics listed by the boulder enthusiasts of South Birmingham.  I wonder if EH would give permission for similar plaques to be stuck onto the bluestones of Stonehenge?  That might help to get some common sense into the interpretation of the old ruin, and help to suppress some of the wilder fantasies that are doing the rounds......

I'm full of admiration for those excellent people in South Birmingham who have recognised erratic boulders in their locality as a fantastic asset for tourism and also commumnity cohesion.  They have a splendid Facebook page, full of photos and bits and pieces of publicity and interpretation.  They claim that the bulk of the boulders have come from the Arenigs in North Wales, and that they were transported by ice around 450,000 years ago.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/10/erratic-behaviour-in-midlands.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-midlands-erratic-hunt.html

They value their erratics so highly that they sometimes give then a nice wash and brush-up, and careful records are kept of erratic sightings in the woods and in other places where the habitat is suitable.

There are 8 (at least) boulder trails, with accompanying guides on the web site.  There are also some well written notes on the erratic hunters web site, such as this one:

https://erraticsproject.org/the-erratic-boulder-hunt/what-do-our-erratic-boulders-look-like/

Known erratics in the Birmingham - Bromsgrove area

Mackintosh's remarkable map from 1879, showing main erratic sources, crossing erratic routes and other features.  The Arenig Fawr erratics are shown by the solid black squares.

To the left, the plucked face of Arenig Fawr, thought to be the source of many of the erratics now found in the south Birmingham area.