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.

It has been a very long time since I've been off looking at stone circles. My books have been about areas without them (or many of them at least), so it was great to take the time to go out and see something special ... and that I did!

The first stop was at the Bonane Heritage Trail - a four euro attraction that is nearly good. The stone circle is a fantastic example and so is the nearby ringfort. It is a shame that the trail doesn't take in the nearby wedge tombs. One of these can be seen across a large stream, and it looks fantastic. The bullaun stone on the trail simply isn't a bullaun stone - it's a straw to clutch at! That said, places like this need to exist. They're a great way to get people to see something they might not otherwise go to. However, while I was in the car park at least three cars drove up, saw the 4 euro fee and drove off.

After this I went to a nearby stone circle, which is possibly the finest I've been to. It's very, very difficult to get to and wondefully peaceful as a consequence. It is a multiple stone circle with an inner circle and a boulder burial.

A quick walk around a heritage trail in Milleens followed before I started to head back home. On the way I stopped by a lovely little four-poster stone circle.

Great sites. Great weather. You can't buy daus like this!

At last I managed to get out and see some sites. The weather forecast for Donegal was (relatively) good and I had a list of excellent stuff to see. The early items on the list were rock art, including the incredible stone at Duncarbit and the monster panel at Mevagh. I also popped in to Mevagh church yard to try and find the panel there.

The rock art didn't end at the planned rock art panels. At two other sites I went two I also came across cup marks on the roofstones of two tombs. A bonus site was the remains of the monastery founded near to the supposed location of St. Comcille's birth. The actual place that is said to be his birthplace is actually a megalithic kist, and this one of the sites that had masses of cup marks on its displaced capstone.

The two panels at Mevagh were a pleasure to see. The one in the churchyard was a lovely surprise, because this looks as if it was reused as a gravestone at some time. The main Mevagh panel, although quite worn and overgrown, is amazing. There are so many motifs on so many faces of the outcrop.

It was great to get out, especially as this trip took me to site 2000. I drove over 1000km to see these sites: the roads between the sites kept taking me back through Letterkenny! The 'mileometer' on my car passed 50,000km as I approached site 2000. A day of big numbers and great sites. One of the best I've had for a long time.

Todat Ken Williams and I climbed up Baltinglass Hill. The last time I went I swore it would be the last time. I'd looked for the carvings up there and found nothing, so I had no reason whatsoever to climb up there again. Then, Ken rings me and says that he'd been told that several of the kerb stones have carvings on them too - do I fancy going up. Oh no ... here we go again.

After my lungs nearly collapsed at several points on the climb (I really must give up smoking!) we reached the top and once again I was at this magnificent monument. The climb up is getting harder, because the band of gorse bushes on the west slopes is now of fairy tale thickness proportions. Anyone would think that there is a princess sleeping in a tower up there! Sadly we didn't find the carvings on the kerbstones even with a printout of Walshes plan in hand.

However, we did manage to get some photographs of the spirals on the orthostats of the one tomb. These are not visible to the naked eye, but can be seen with side flash. The problem with this is that you need to know which orthostats the carvings are on. Luckily for us the plan had these stones marked.

Ken was very impressed with the site, and rightly so. It's a great place and one of the county's real gems. This said, I still don't think I'll be back up there again in a hurry.

The weather was terrible today - so unpredictable. One moment it was raining heavily and the next it was sunny. Driving around doesn't help because sometimes you can be moving with or into the rain. On days like this I find it's best to plan visits to roadside monuments - it's not much fun being stuck on top of a hill when the rain comes down.

As I've mentioned quite often recently, I have tended to go to the big counties over the years and I need to spend some time in the 'lesser' counties megalithically speaking. Today it was Offaly's turn.

There aren't a lot of places in Offaly with the dramatic impact of a portal tomb, but it does have a lot barrows and, and this is where I get really interested, bullaun stones. I am now approaching 2000 monuments on megalithomania. I've been to more than that over the last 7+ years, but combining some of them into one site in the early days means that number-wise there are less than 2000.

I had planned my route today to take me to a bullaun stone for site 2000, but I think the rain stopped me one short: I'll see when I look at my notes later. I may have unwittingly made it to 2000 sites on megalithomania. If I have done so, then the 2000 site is a pretty uninspiring bullaun stone. If I haven't made it to 2000 I will target something really special for my first site on the next trip.