Carn Blorenge Round Cairn View all content for Carn Blorenge

Visited 9.7.13 Directions: From the village of Blaenavon (World Heritage Site no less) take the B4246 north. As you reach the top of the hill and rise out onto open moorland take the first turning on the right. (You will see the two large transmitters) Next to the transmitters there is a large car park – park here. From the car park follow the gravel path and then the obvious ‘path’ through the heather which takes you to the summit of Blorenge (rhythms with orange!) Mountain and the large Cairn. 7.30am and already I am stood on top of the Cairn. Why this early? Good question. I had been given the day off work in order to do some voluntary work helping construct river anti-erosion screens for the Woodland Trust. I wasn’t due to start until 9.45am and looking at the map I could see it wasn’t too much further to drive to Blorenge. So, there we are, an early start but well worth the effort. Although I doubt the ‘courting couple’ I disturbed in the car park thought so!! There is an information board in the car park giving details of this part of the World Heritage Site but no mention of the Cairn. The path across the mountain is called ‘Heather and Heritage’. Another thing of note is the large mound of stone with a plaque on it stating that this is the resting place of the horse Foxhunter who died in 1959. The horse was famous in the equestrian world and won Olympic Gold. The car park is named Foxhunter in its honour. First time I have seen a burial site for a horse. The weather over the last few days had been glorious and we had been promised more to come. However, at this time of the morning, at this height, things were much different. Threatening clouds hung over Blorenge Mountain like a great black cape although below it you could see the sun shining on the valley below. I seemed somewhat inappropriately dressed in my shorts and t-shirt! As you walk to the Cairn you pass many piles of jumbles stones, many of them Cairn-like. Can there really only be one Cairn up here or perhaps (more likely) there are others hidden amongst the heather? Two piles in particular looked very much like a Cairn. One was about 0.3m high x 5m across and the other 1m high x 3m across. But there again – what do I know? Carn Blorenge is a fine site and sight although it has suffered from the usual walker’s shelter adaptation. I could see no trace of the cist mentioned by COFLEIN – I assume it has since been back-filled with stones? The views of course are very fine indeed. In the distance, across the heather, there looked for all the world to be a standing stone of some 2m in height. Why wasn’t this on the map? After getting my feet soaked tramping through the wet heather I discovered the answer – it is a natural rock outcrop. It did make me wonder however if it had been used as a standing stone in the ancient past. Who knows? All in all a good place to visit. COFLEIN states: ‘Extensive robbing of a cairn, 15m in diameter and 2m in height, has exposed an eccentric cist, 1.4m by 0.7m’.

Posted by CARL 11th July 2013ce

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