I love going out on the 1st January. Everything seems so fresh and it makes me believe that I might just see a lot of stuff this year: start as you mean to go on!

Today I decided to head north to Louth, in particular around Carlingford. There are a few court tombs up there that I haven't been to yet and I wanted to revisit a couple of sites. My route also took me past Clontygora (County Armagh) and I couldn't resist stopping. I attempted to revisit Clermont Cairn (County Louth), but the montain top was shrouded in freezing cloud and the road near to the transmitter was covered in ice! I did manage to go back to the two monuments at Aghnaskeagh (County Louth). I can't believe it's been almost 7 years since I was there.

The two court tombs were very different. The one is just a nice little gallery with no court stones, while the other is just the remnants of the court with possibly the most massive entrance stones I've ever seen.

I finished off the day at the fence-embedded passage tomb at Faughart Lower before heading home to make sure I saw Wallace And Grommit on TV tonight (I missed it on Christmas Day.)

I will be trying to concentrate on Mayo in the main part for my next book. As usual I will head to other areas and I intend to give Tipperary and Limerick a bit more attention as well as some of the midland counties.

Happy New Year to you all!

After seeing some recent photos of Magheraghanrush (County Sligo) with the tress around it felled I had to head up there and see it for myself. I prepared myself for the usual post-nuclear-holocaust-landscape that you always get when pine plantations are cleared and I wasn't disappointed! The hillside is a mess, but the open views from the tomb and the ability to see it from a distance do make up for that. I also visited the nearby cashel & souterain and wedge tomb while I was there.

On my way to Magheraghanrush I stopped to see the ruined passage tomb at Ardloy. I suppose this could be described as a very remote outlier of the Kesh/Carrowkeel group. The two hills clearly dominate the western and southwestern skyline from the site.

After Magheraghanrush I had planned to head for the cairn and tomb on Slieve Dargan. In the end I had to decide which one of the two I would visit as the terrain is almost impassable and it was getting dark. In the end I plumped for the tomb (obviously). What an amazing gem this is! You may remember how gobsmacked I was when I visited the tomb at Croaghaun Mountain (County Sligo). Well, this is so much better! I wish I could have spent a lot more time up here, but I'd left it too late and it got very windy at the top.

Sadly, the whole day was hampered by very hazy weather, which meant that the views to Maeve's Cairn (County Sligo) were very limited. I could see it, but for photographic purposes it was quite frustrating.

All-in-all it was a wonderful day out. The open views from Magheraghanrush alone were enough to make it a great day but the Slieve Dargan passage tomb really made it special. I think this monument is the highlight of my year travelling around Ireland.

I am now planning my New Year's Day trip - I always like to try and start the year off with a trip. I might not get to anything utterly mind-blowing, but I will go to see something; I just have to be moderate on New Year's Eve!

At last! I managed to get out and about today and I finally did my little trip down to The Glen of Aherlow to visit a few tombs on the hills above and in the neighbourhood.

Firstly I visited a standing stone in a Zimmer Frame! Really, I did. Why this standing stone was put inside an odd little frame is beyond me. The horrible concrete slab is bad enough. After that I fought my way to the wedge tomb on Cromwell Hill. Reaching this was a real chore, as the southwest end of the ridge it stands on ends in a 20 foot cliff - guess which direction I approached from!

Once those sites were done and dusted I headed south to the Glen of Aherlow where I managed to find Corderry wedge tomb and Shrough passage tomb. The latter is quite straight forward as it's right on top of the hill. The wedge tomb is a bit more difficult as it is hidden amongst some thick gorse with only cow tracks through it to allow movement. Both of these are tremendous monuments. The passage tomb because of its location and views in all directions, and the wedge tomb for its state of preservation and the views to the south.

While I was in the area I popped back to Gortahover (County Tipperary). Sadly, no one seems to be paying any attention to it. The area around it was a mess and someone had left some plastic bottles in the bullauns.

A couple of bits of info/news about megalithomania.com:

1) I have improved the random site RSS feed to include a bit more information about the site. I will make some more adjustments to it soon.

2) I am thinking about allowing registered guests to add small comments to the sites I've visited to give other perspectives on a site/monument. I'm not sure about this just yet, though.

3) I have a new camera and I love it!

4) I am also thinking about adding a forum to the site, but, again, I'm not too sure about this. Experience elsewhere has shown me that forums take up a lot of time and are often more trouble than they're worth.

5) I have finally found someone to screenprint my t-shirts! I am hoping to have the first of these available in February. I will have a limited number of shirts with one design on it - a drawing from Borlase's Dolmens of Ireland - as a market tester. I will try and keep the price as low as possible. If this works out ok then I'll do other designs featuring drawings from Borlase and other rare 19th Century books.

Firstly I would like to ask Jacinta O'Sullivan to get in touch with me through my contact page. I'm really interested in what you have to say about Derrynablahah! I love that place and I'll keep returning to it again and again!

I was planning to do a lot during December, but as you'll have noticed I haven't quite managed it. Since my return from Scotland I've been very ill. I've nearly recovered now, but today my daughter is running a temperature, so I'm staying in to keep an eye on her. There's loads I have to pass on, though: I have had an email to tell me that Carrickgollogan (County Dublin) is now totally overgrown and can no longer be seen. This is not a fantastic site, but the loss of anywhere to visit around Dublin is sad. Also, the back route to Glendruid (County Dublin) is currently inaccessible due to the Luas works. Let's see what access is like when the line is operational.

A while back I had some good news about Howth. In my book, Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Dublin, I comment that there are no sign-posted sites in the county. I'm happy to say that this seems to no longer be the case, because the local history society have put up signs around Howth! Well done to them.

I would like to thank all the people who have bought my latest book, Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Antrim, so far. It's been quite popular, but as I'd suspected it hasn't sold as quickly as the Dublin book did initially. I am now working on my next title, Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Mayo, which will be thicker. Mayo is a huge county with lots and lots of amazing monuments.

I will definitely make the effort to get out there over the holidays and see some great stuff. I have a good list of things to go and see in some of the counties that I've not visited all that often, such as Limerick and Tipperary.

Have a great holiday period everyone!

There won't be any more Posts in November, because I am off to Scotland for a bit of a break. I haven't taken any holiday this year, so I have decided to pack myself off for a bit of me time to Kilmartin and Arran. This area is rich in prehistoric monuments, especially Kilmartin, which is a ritual landscape almost without rival! This trip also gives me chance to go to the tip of the Mull of Kintyre and look back on County Antrim. I stood at the northeast tip of Antrim on many occasions while researching my latest book, Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Antrim (available from my shop!), so I am looking forward to reversing the view.

I have shipped all orders received so far fro my latest book, but will not be processing any for 10 days or so. Don't worry, though, anything ordered while I am away will still get to people for Christmas. Amny thanks to all those that have ordered it already. I hope you enjoy reading and using it as much as I did writing it.

Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Antrim is now available from the shop - just click on the link at the top of the page and go to page 2. I think it looks great (I would, wouldn't I). So, come on, help support this site and buy a copy. Remember, I offer free postage in Ireland and only ask 1 euro towards the postage for the rest of the world. I also sign every copy ordered direct.

Now, this trip to Sligo was all about one place - the passage tomb on top of Crohaughn Mountain. I have heard so much about this place and have always wanted to visit it. Today I finally made the trek to the top of of wonderful conical peak in the Ox Mountains. The views from up there are totally awe inspiring with Knocknarea to the north, Carrowkeel and Kesh to the southeast and Knocknashee to the southwest.

Before making this climb I visited a beautiful 7-basin bullaun stone. What a great, unsung bullaun this one is.

After two hours at the top of the mountain waiting for cloud to clear Knocknarea (it never did) and just soaking up and enjoying the views in general, I drove down towards Kesh with the intention of visiting the cairn on its summit, but my legs couldn't take another climb. I settled for visiting one of the cairns between Kesh and Carrowkeel, which gave me a great view of the larger cairns at Carrowkeel.

Sligo really does have some great scenery and the lesser known monuments in the Ox Mountains deserve much more recognition. I should have gone back to Magheraghanrush (County Sligo), because the trees around it have finally been felled and you can now enjoy the view all the way to Knocknarea. I only found out about the clearance the day after this trip.

First off - some news. My new book is now back from the printers and I'll shortly have Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Antrim available in my shop. It looks great and I'm very happy with it.

As I mentioned before, Ken Williams wanted to go up to Loughcrew to check out one of Martin Brennan's alignment predictions for Cairn H. This is an unusual alignment with a late October sunrise that possibly doesn't mean anything, but it has been suggested that it may have served as an early warning for the forthcoming winter solstice.

Cairn H, like many of the other cairns, has no roof, so Ken suggested taking a groundsheet up and covering the passage to recreate the effect. This worked fantastically well and we witnessed a very moving effect. I think we may have actually have been a few days late, but we did see the sun hit the rear wall and then light up the nicely carved threshhold stone to the north chamber. The heavily carved orthostat in the passage was also nicely lit.

After mooching around the hill and revisiting some of the other cairns we headed over to the other hill to see some recently rediscovered rock art.

After that we went down to the stone circle in the valley below. I've looked down on this from the hilltops many times, but never managed to get down to it. We stumbled around for a while looking for the rock art panel next to the circle. Some had said that it was moved to the National Museum while others said it's by the circle. Eventually we found it - inside the stone circle! And it's beautiful.

All in all, this was a great day.

Myself and Ken Williams were planning a trip to Loughcrew for the sunrise, but today's weather wasn't good enough, so I headed down to Carlow to revisit a couple of sites, look for two that I'd failed to find previously.

The revisit was to Crannagh (County Carlow) and the neighbouring panel that I discovered in December 2007. I have recently bought some new flash equipment and I wanted to test it out and try to get used to it. Unfortunately, the sun came out and shone brightly onto the panels, making it very difficult for the flash to make any difference.

After visiting these panels I headed for the standing stone also in Crannagh townland that stands inside a circular enclosure. When I found it I couldn't believe how close I'd previously been to it.

The fourth and last site of the day was the garden-based rock art panel in Knockmore townland. The owner of the house brought it into her garden and placed it opposite her back door after it was dug up in a nearby field. Mid afternoon is not the time to visit this one as the carved surface faces south and the sun wipes out the carvings.

I have finally gotten around to putting up the pictures from my last outing just in time to start adding the details of this trip. I set off for Kerry at around 5am to hunt down some rock art and to meet Ken Williams later in the day to visit an area that is simply packed with rock art. The weather forecast was horrible, but did hint at clearing up later in the day. No one told the weather that it was supposed to clear up, though!

I first visited a townland called Derreeny, which is on the opposite side of the valley to the masses of rock art in Derrynablaha 11 (County Kerry). I had some good coordinates and managed to find two panels. Considering the weather I think I did rather well. I had to change my clothes after getting soaked looking for these.

After these panels I set off to meet Ken at Kealduff Upper, where there are around 20 panels. We managed to see seven or so. Sadly, it was raining so much that many of my pictures are useless: my lens kept getting covered with splashes. Oh well, I'll just have to go back! Such a hardship!

Look out for my next book, Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Antrim, which should be available very shortly. We are currently waiting for it to return from the printers. I will, of course, add details to my shop pages as soon as it is ready to be shipped.

After my last trip to see some stone circles for the first time in a while, I decided to head west to Clare to see some tombs. I started in the south near to O'Brien's Bridge and ended up with a lovely, ankle-breaking walk in the Burren. I managed to get to Cappaghkennedy after being inspired by messages on my contact page and similarly inspired went and hunted out Parknabinnia court tomb - which I was beginning to think was mythical!

Before I go into the details of my day out I have a few things to mention. Firstly, I have recently started to use some free contour maps of Ireland on my GPS. After following instructions I managed to get them working with the Garmin maps, but with a few issues. When I have these ironed out I'll give out a link. Secondly, Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Antrim has no gone to print. I'll post an update as soon as I know when it will be available.

Back to my day. I got tantalizingly close to the first two lovely wedge tombs I went to see. The first sits on a hill summit behind a farm with many dogs and there was no one in when I arrived there. The second is located in a paddock next to a nicely renovated farm complex. The owners here were also out. I'll have to go back to both of these sites, because they look amazing.

Then I headed to the Burren to make the epic pilgrimage to Cappaghkennedy, a wonderful Burren wedge tomb that is very isolated. I chose one of the longest approaches to reach it. This involved a 2 mile walk across typical Burren limestone pavements, some of which are grass covered. These bits can be the most difficult, because you stop concentrating. Good boots are a must!!! After the tomb and cairns at Cappaghkennedy I headed for Parknabinnia, where I've already seen a handful of tombs. This time I was after the court tomb - one of only two in Clare. I can understand why the writer in my guestbook was so pleased to have found this: it's quite special. Thanks to them for the inspiration to get back over to the Burren.