While walking the Southern Upland Way, I came across a seemingly abandoned arch on the top of Benbrack (during day 4 of the walk so I feared I was hallucinating from the exertion of walking).

Quite a while later it all clicked into place – it was better signposted from a road than approaching by walking!

Striding Arches is an artist-led project ‘which celebrates and interprets a little known area of Dumfries & Galloway in south-west Scotland’. Andy Goldsworthy’s red sandstone arches ‘stride’ around a natural amphitheatre deep in the Southern Uplands.

The Arches are formed from 31 hand-dressed blocks of red sandstone from a nearby quarry, each arch stands just under four metres high, with a span of seven metres, weighing approximately 27 tons, and is totally self-supporting.

So that explains it!  Glad I didn’t have to carry a piece up there.