Today was one of the wonderful days in the year when my wife, Uta, and I go out together. It's always a pleasure to do so, as I not only have great company, but I get to revisit some great sites and experience new ones with her, too. Today we decided to head for Burren in Cavan. Here you can find wedge tombs, portal tombs, rock art and more: all within a short distance of each other. To help us find some of the monuments we had a little booklet with us produced by Gaby Burns who has, in recent years, spent much time surveying the area.

Apart from visiting the megalithic tombs in the area I wanted to track down the three rock art panels in the townland. This we did successfully and as an added bonus I found one that isn't included in the booklet and may well be a new panel.

After seeing all that the woodland area had to offer we went to see a nearby sweathouse, a cashel and a portal tomb. The portal tomb, although collapse has become one of my favourites and I think it's unique. Like others of its kind it has been altered to be used as a shelter - maybe even a sweathouse! - but what makes it special is the wall that it appears to be built into. This wall is very wide, much wider that all the other walls around the monument and extends along the central axis. I think this wall is the original cairn. If so, it is the only one left remaining to the height of the capstone. Fantastic!

The cashel we went to isn't the one I was hoping to see, but a second example in Moneygashel townland. The landowner for the other one (which has a sweathouse built inside it) denied that it existed, but she might have been confused about the area of land I was talking about and it might not be on their land. I'll have to go and find it another way. I don't mind an excuse to head back here as there is plenty of rock art to the north in Fermanagh to track down.

I'd planned a big trip to Achill Island for the weekend, but the weather was terrible. All too often recently I've let bad weather keep me from going out and I wasn't going to let it happen today. I wasn't going to go camping in it, but I wasn't going to stay indoors, either.

So, I set off for Westmeath to track down a few bullaun stones - no surprises with my choice of target really! I tend to ignore the midland counties, so it seemed like a good plan to see what I could find.

I had some success. I managed to track down some bullaun stones that I don't think have been visited for a long time. One is a big lump of limestone and another was the only one I've been to that is a quartzy comglomerate. I also went to a very interesting motte and bailey, which is in very good condition. The motte itself looks as if it could be a reused barrow.

All-in-all the weather was pretty bad. I came across several trees that the high winds had brought down and it didn't stop raining until mid-afternoon. I still had a very enjoyable day out, though.

After canceling my trip to Achill Island this weekend (too tired and a bad weather forecast) I decided to tidy up some things on megalithomania.com. Firstly, I have fixed the stylesheets for printing! You can now print these pages quite nicely. I have hidden the left-hand-side menus and all sorts of other gubbings that aren't needed in a print out. I've also increased the font size on the printouts. As well as sorting out printing I've been tidying up bits of code to make things a bit more streamlined. You'll not notice these as the final out come on the page is identical.

I have also added functionality to allow other users to rate a site/monument. A form can be found on each page to do this. Hopefully, it won't get abused and I can leave it on the pages. I don't want to have to add a verification graphic thing to it, but I will if it is misused. At some point I will add something to show a list of recent rating to the home page.

Hopefully, this will give visitors a more balanced view of sites. My opinion is only one of many, so a little extra help is a bonus.

My day started at Ballyglass (County Mayo) in the hope that it had been cleared. Sadly not. I had to find the farmer for a project we were thinking about and he told me that the site would 'stay overgrown for as long as he was alive'. Shame. He added that he was fed up with people just turning up and being disrespectful. Shame.

After that I went to Tawnatruffaun (County Sligo) to meet up with Ken Williams to hunt for a cup-and-ring marked stone near to the tomb. Sadly we found the stone embedded in the wall. I say sadly, because the stone turned out to be half a millstone, abandoned after it broke in two. The alledged ring is actually the scratched out position of the hole in the centre.

After that Ken headed home and I set off (with little hope) to find two tombs that I've looked for previously and (obviously) never managed to find. Today I found both of them. The first is an almost complete wedge tomb and the second an almost perfect court tomb with a roof and impressive corbelling.

I was starting to panic a bit. It was nearly a whole month since I had been to see a stone and there wasn't long to go before I found myself not having a site visit for a whole calendar month! May 08 was starting to look grim! This is because I have been working 12 hours a day for most of the week for the last 5 weeks and the weekends found me lacking in energy. I had to spend whatever energy I had left trying to finish Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Antrim.

Anyway, finally, on Sunday night I decided that I must go out and see something. Going down the road to a site I'd been to wasn't an option either: it had to be somewhere new. Preferably a new site not only to me but also to the internet. A little digging around turned up a good candidate, but it was risky - an inner-town bullaun. What were the chances of it still being there?

So, off I went to Clane. First impressions weren't good. I walked up and down the road and down side streets looking for big stones that could have enough room for a bullaun. I found a millstone surrounded by large boulders in a little park nearby, but none of these were the bullaun stone. A hand-painted map by a church showed the bullaun where I'd been walking, so one last walk down the road ...

Is this the last trip to Antrim for a while? I'm not 100% sure yet, but it could be. I will just have to see how things go over the next week or so. I might realise that I need to revisit somewhere or that I've missed something that can't be omitted from the book, Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Antrim.

I was surprised today by how many monuments (mainly standing stones) have disappeared. Quite a lot of sites marked on the OS maps are no longer there. On the plus side, I've managed to visit a number of Antrim sites that aren't on the OS maps!

Today was all about the last few sites (I hope). Some standing stones, a court tomb, a hillfort with a view and some cairns. The cairns were disappointing, but had great views. The court tomb, although ruined, is a nice one - it would have been quite impressive when complete.

With the Bank Holiday weekend approaching I may make one final visit to County Antrim. I'd like to get to Rathlin Island.

Today I was back in Antrim again. I didn't see a large amount of sites, which disappointed me a little bit at first, but then I realised this is because there isn't a lot left for me to see for the book. I think one more weekend will finish the field trips. Now it's just down to finishing writing it all up. The plan is to get the manuscript to the publishers early in May. However, there's a lot of excavation reports and ancillary texts to trawl through to make sure I haven't missed anything. I don't think I have so far.

The sites today were mainly standing stones in the western half of the county. There are some lovely ones out there, but many of the stones on my list have disappeared. The most exciting thing I saw was a tomb that appears nowhere on the internet, yet. It's not on the OS maps, but it's easy to find (once you know where it is!)

The weather today was great. I'm happy that I didn't take any notice of the weather forecast. I was in t-shirt and sunglasses all day long!

I am currently waiting for the cover art work to come back from design. There'll be no major surprises, because we will be sticking to the same simple format, but I don't know what colours they will use. The slight delay in me finishing the text means that it is unlikely that we will get an early summer publication, but hopefully we will manage it before the summer has ended.

After staying the night in Bushmills, County Antrim, I set off to revisit a few sites and take in a few new ones if I could. The weather was brilliant and there are a few sites I'd only been to in poor weather, so these were top of my list. I revisited the ruined passage tomb at West Torr (County Antrim) and walked back up to the lovely passage tomb at Carnanmore (County Antrim), before going to the court tomb at Lubitavish (see Ossian's Grave (County Antrim)). This took me very close to the very important axe factory on Tievebulliagh. It took me a while to find out who owned the land here and get permission to walk up the hill, so this is where my day ended.

Moving on ...
I'm writing this day up very late indeed. On 19th March many of you will have seen myself on RTEs Nationwide program. This website has been buzzing ever since. I really appreciate the comments I've been getting from lots and lots of people! The next step is to convince RTE that they would like to do a small series about Ireland's amazing prehistoric heritage that is a bit more serious and in depth than some of the recent attempts that have been made.

So, many thanks to everyone for you support and kind words! I feel re-invigorated and inspired to get out there and do more. I'm charging through Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Antrim at a good pace, so a summer publication date is looking likely.

Today is the first day of a two day trip to Antrim. Most of the day was spent around Knocklayd Mountain visiting the standing stone and early Christian remains. I didn't reach all of the standing stones around this fine mountain, but I did see the majority of them. One more trip and I should get to see the rest.

After encircling Knocklayd I headed off to see a few more sites of interest. One of these was Skerry church, which is perched on top of a high rocky outcrop. It is from this place that St. Patrick is said to have tried to step on to the top of Slemish Mountain to the east. He failed to do so and landed in the river below. He is said to have left a footprint at Skerry and one in a stone in the river. Below Skerry church I tracked down the remains of a court tomb, which until now was considered destroyed and lost.

I spent the night at The Causeway Hotel, right next to the Giant's Causeway visitor centre. This gave me the rare chance to visit the Causeway after most of the other visitors had left. When devoid of packs of tourists it is an incredible wonder to behold!

I didn't have a lot of time this week for going out, so once again I headed down to Wicklow to hunt down a couple of things. I managed to locate another bullaun stone and a cup-marked stone - I actually thought I was looking for a bullaun stone, but it turned out to be a cup-marked stone with a possible bullaun in it.

The bullaun stone I did find is a lovely one, but it's in a reservoir and so a bit tricky to see properly. A bit of shallow wading and then a climb up a nearby tree allowed me a limited view, but I'll have to go back in the summer when the water's a bit lower to take a better look.

I've managed to catch up on all the images from my previous trips now and I'll get these two sites up as soon as possible. I've also updated the Google Earth .KMZ files, so all sites up to this weekend's trip are available.

As before, work on Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Antrim is on schedule, so a mid to late summer release is looking likely!