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.

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.

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.