Near, at Huntly Nabb, the shore (which for a long way together has lain open) now rises into high rocks; and here and there, at the bottom of the rocks; lie great stones of several sizes so exactly form’d round by nature that one would think them bullets cast by some Artist for the great Guns. If you break them, you find, within, stony Serpents wreathed up in Circles, but generally without heads.
Camden’s Britannia 1586. Translation & edition of 1722 by Gibson
The Smell of Water 
You know all the best places. It’s nice having such a thing pop into one’s email on a Monday morning, thank you. It transports me out of the office to somewhere romantic and windswept. We have our own cruel snake-botherer down here as well, turning them to stone and inexplicably deheading them. How marvellous to break open a round stone and find one.
Hi and thanks Rhiannon. Thankfully our lovely adder population were spared the nun’s wrath.
Coincidentally, I’m off to the Rotunda in Scarborough today to have a look at the maps drawn by the bloke who first tracked the Jurassic across our island, Strata Smith.