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!
What a day! It rained a little bit after I'd passed Belfast, but it wasn't much. I certainly wasn't expecting the hail and snow I got at the top of Knocklayd Mountain! Amazingly, there was a group of people climbing up it, too. Hello to you if you come across this.
As usual I had a list of sites to see, but (as usual lately) rain late in the day stopped my site-seeing. I did manage to get to a few new sites and revisit a couple of others to take another look at them. One of these revisits was to the two portal tombs at Ballyvennaght on the way to the nearby standing stone. The other sites included the cairn on top of Knocklayd, two stone pairs and a court tomb. The latter, Carndoo at Ballyboley, was particularly interesting, because although the court is ruined the gallery still has much of its roof - a real rarity.
As soon as I've finished adding last week's images I'll pop the new Seasick Steve CD on to play and get on with writing this trip up properly.
Work on Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Antrim is on schedule, so a mid to late summer release is looking likely! It'll soon be time to start on the fourth book, which will cover a county from Connaght, but I still don't know which one yet.
A while ago I set off to see some of the standing stones of Wexford, but was turned back by poor weather. Today I decided to retry the trip and to also see some other Wexford monuments, including Wexford's only recorded bit of rock art. Sadly, this lone piece of rock art was not to be found. It lies somewhere in the middle of a plantation, which has recently been 'cleared' leaving the area looking like a demolition site. I don't hold out much hope for this stone unless it was moved before planting.
That aside, the day was quite successful. I saw several standing stones, a fine stone pair, revisited a stone row and a portal tomb, and saw a good selection of bullaun stones (no surprises there!). I'm glad I went back to the stone row. I only managed to see it through a hedge last time and I thought it was rather small. In fact it's massive and wonderful!
The sites took me on a zig-zag trip down and repeatedly across the county, passing through towns and villages I'd not been to before. It's always a pleasure to see new places, but there's something odd about Wexford - when you stop and talk to people they're really friendly, but they don't give you that little raised-index-finger-wave as they drive past on country lanes that you get around the rest of the country.
Not too long ago I received an email from someone pointing out that County Laois has much more than megalithomania.com features. This is true, although I have to say not a great deal in the way of things megalithic. Anyway, with the freezing fog that was around this morning I didn't want to head up to Antrim again, so I headed across country to Laois and Tipperary.
The sites on my list had some variation to them, too. Not just rock art and bullaun stones this time (I ended up seeing quite a few more bullaun stones.) I started at a very accessible roadside barrow and proceeded via a round tower and a sheela-na-gig to a string of bullaun stones.
I'd previously been to the round tower at Timahoe, but I didn't have any pictures of the lovely Romanesque doorway. Nor did I have a proper grid reference for the site - I noticed that the one on megalithomania.com is way out!
The sheela-na-gig at Cullahill is one I'd tried to see before, but I'd been looking on the wrong wall of the castle. It has been known to become covered in ivy from time to time, too, so that could explain my previous failures to see it. It is now cleared and easy to see ... when you know where it is.
The bullauns were mainly in Tipperary, where I was following in the footsteps of local a man, Derek, who has already visited many of them.
At one of the sites, a bullaun stone known as St. Kieran's Knee, I met two lovely gentlemen who told me tales of how the bullaun stone and the nearby holy well got their name. These two chaps keep the well and stone in good order and would love for it to be signposted so that more people can enjoy them and even use them for the cures they are supposed to provide. It's great to meet people like this and the country could do with many more of them. Sadly, I'm not sure there'll be people to follow that will take such pride in their local treasures.
With the forecast looking good I arranged to meet Anthony Weir in Antrim in order to see some little-visited tombs. As I passed Belfast the fog became really thick and I thought that we'd not get to see anything, but it eventually started to lift after our first site. It never really cleared though and the sky stayed bright white making it very difficult to take pictures.
Among the sites on my target list were Ireland's longest court tomb and a small monument that was once used as a pigsty! The former is incredible and hardly touched, while the latter is rather cute, but presents a few classification questions. We eventually decided it was similar to the tomb at Ballylumford (County Antrim).
It wasn't possible to see al the sites I wanted to, because I don't know my northeast from my northwest and we spent quite a while talking to one of the farmers we met. Mis-remembering that a site lay northeast of a mountain meant we went for a long walk that we didn't need to do, which cost us about an hour.
What? More bullaun stones? Surely not!? I'm afraid so, folks. After a quick chat with Chris Corlett during the week I was armed with loads of information about some bullaun stones that I've looked for many times. Today I found them, so I owe Chris great thanks.
As well as the many bullaun stones I was also able to find several pieces of rock art that I've been hunting down for many years now. I've been looking for one of them for 7 years! ... and it's in somebody's front garden. It was feared that the stone had been lost or buried, but it's safe and sound.
I met up Ken Williams in the afternoon, but we were both limited in time by then. We went to the lovely, but worn, rock art panel at Tinnacarreg. Hiding under the brambles that covered the stone until recently we uncovered two bullaun stones right next to the panel. After that we headed off to track down a second stones in Ballinkillin.
What a great day. Six bullaun stones and five rock art panels. The crazy thing is that I drove past at least 15 bullaun stones en route! You can only have days like this around the Wicklow Mountains.
