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.
I'm starting to love County Antrim more and more. Not only is it chocked full of wonderful monuments, but the landscape is beautiful and the people are so friendly. Stopping and talking to farmers is seriously slowing me down on my research, but I don't mind that much. It's a pleasure to pass the time of day with these great people.
Today the weather was outstanding. I was rather glad about this, because one of the sites I was visiting involved a 3km walk. The lovely, phallic standing stone on Ballygilbert Hill is great. I was very surprised at its size, too. I had expected something a lot smaller. The view over the bay below and out to sea towards the Maidens or Hulin Rocks and northeast to The Mull of Kintyre is pretty good too!
I managed to get to al but one of the sites on my list today as well as stumbling across a couple of cairns that I wasn't expecting to see. As well as seeing a few new monuments I also popped back to see the rather ungainly portal tomb at Ticloy (County Antrim) that I visited some 900 monuments ago.
Last week saw my monument count go over 1900 - quite a landmark. I'm not sure when I'll reach 2000 at the moment, because a lot of the ones I have not seen are rather spread out now: there's little opportunity to go and blitz an area and see 20 in one go these days.
I still don't know when the piece we recorded for RTÉ's Nationwide program will be broadcast, but I'll let you all know as soon as I do. As mentioned last week I have rewritten one of my other websites - monu-metal.com, which features news and info about my books. This new site is now live.
This weekend was supposed to involve a trip to Antrim, but the weather conspired against me once more. Well, the weather forecast conspired against me - on Friday it said Saturday would be ok, but when Saturday arrived it said differently. It did say that Sunday would be ok, though. However, when Sunday arrived it had changed again, so I decided to stay at home. Typically, Sunday turned out to be a nice day after all!
Staying at home wasn't too bad, though. I did start to rewrite one of my other websites, which I'll relaunch soon. My new, high-spec web server also meant that some of the code for this website needed attention. The move to the new server gave me the opportunity to upgrade various things and these newer versions caused a few problems. I'm fairly certain that I'v overcome these now, but there may still be a few issues on some of the less frequented pages.
As well as the above I also refined the designs for the t-shirts I am thinking of producing. These feature rare and wonderful old line drawings of megalithic monuments taken from 19th Century books. I will probably put a small number up for sale via the shop soon, so keep an eye out for an announcement on the home page and here in my blogs.
After the excitement of going out filming for RTÉ yesterday I needed something more gentle. Recently Andy Ryan stumbled upon two bullaun stones right next to Ullard (County Kilkenny) church in Kilkenny, so I headed off to see those.
En route I stopped off at another one I only heard about recently and revisited the stone at Kildreenagh (County Carlow). While at Kildreenagh I also hunted out the second bullaun in a field close by. Whilst returning from this stone I spotted an earthfast boulder with a single cupmark - another previously unrecorded piece of rock art within sight of Mount Leinster.
When I reached Ullard I met a couple visiting the holy well near to the bullauns - the well is still in regular use and still believed to cure ailments. I let the couple take the waters before photographing the well. Then the rain came, so my day was cut short, but luckily not by much and I'd seen most of the sites I'd set out to see.
Welcome to 2008! I got off to a slow start this year, because I didn't go out on New Year's Day as I have done in recent years. However, the first trip of the year turned out to be a very interesting one. For once I won't be posting details of all the sites I visited, because today I had a RTÉ reporter and cameraman with me. We were recording a little piece for Nationwide. Ill let you all know when it's due to air.
The only site I'll mention is the lovely little urban portal tomb in Ballybrack (County Dublin). I was shocked to see that the top of the capstone has been badly vandalised. Graffiti has been daubed all over it in white paint.
I have seen so much rock art lately that you're probably getting a bit tired of seeing nothing else, so today was a trip to break the recent trend. Today I was off to see passage tombs! Not any old passage tombs and not your usual suspects, either. Today was about Antrim and its small group of coastal, passage-less passage tombs plus the amazing hilltop passage tomb-proper at Carnanmore.
I had meant to see a lot more on my way up through Antrim, but it was very foggy for the best part of the morning, forcing me to drive on by many interesting looking sites. Luckily, by the time I reached a bit further north the mist and fog had all cleared and I was able to make my ascent up a rough, boggy hillside to Carnanmore.
The site before Carnanmore was a real surprise. I was expecting a court tomb, but instead found a southerly outlier to the northern coastal passage tomb group. And what views, too! That comment applies from most of the sites I went to today - I could see clearly across to Scotland at one point!
Once again the people of Antrim made me feel very welcome. Lovely chats and kind permission to visit the sites is always a feature of a trip to Antrim.
