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Fieldnotes
| If I dont think about it too much then this site is probably #1 on my most wanted list. Everything came together at the right time so Eric me and the dogs were leaving for the stones at 2am, it's a long way and I wanted to be on site early, hence our ridiculously early start. Five hours later. We parked by the telephone box on the road south east of the cairn. We should have walked up the road a bit and entered the wilds just after the house called Glanrhyd, but we didn't, we went up through the forestry place. It was hard going, especially when we left the track, trees had fallen down and now and then our way was blocked by ten foot high root balls, a solid wall of earth, root, rock and small bits of crashed UFO's. On the lower slopes, below the outcrops, the ground can get very boggy off the path (on the path too for that matter), progress was all right, only it went on too long, as Mr Thurber say. Eventually we let the dogs pull us up to the top, mush, and once more I stand a top a Preseli Carn. But which is it, there's quite a few clustered together and they've all got there own names. Carn Gwr has two cairns by it, but today I only have eyes for chambered cairns, I could easily spend the whole sunlit part of the day exploring these hills, there is much to see. But I must stick to the plan or I wont be able to see #2 on my must see list, just a couple of standing stones more and then were outta there. We hop from rock to rock, I knew the cairn was next to a big rock stack, we'd gone through them all and were down to our last one, there's a lot of stone around here it has to be said, it took some time to find it, but in the end it was right where I thought it would be. With my usual alacrity I took us up the long way. It was a touch on the misty drizzly side when we got on site, but it didn't detract from the place at all, it lent an ethereal beauty to the place, we couldn't see down to the road, the only distant places we could see was the other hill tops. It is mostly like any other cairn, it's round-ish, and is a stony hump in the landscape. But right in the middle of the stony mass is a whopper capstone nigh on three meters square, it isn't square. Under the capstone can be seen the fallen orthostats of the collapsed chamber, coflein suggests a Neolithic or maybe early bronze age date. But most freaky of all is the stone river, a long curving line of boulders and assorted rubble maybe a mile long, I thought it was near or maybe next to the chambered cairn , but it's much better than that the stone river erupts right out of the side of the cairn. What a place to put your cairn, genius, absolute genius, on Dartmoor they erect stone rows for the same purpose, what ever that is. But here the earth itself, time or glaciers does the work for you. Sublime. Cant recommend the place enough, i'm extremely perplexed as to why only Kammer has posted on it. |
Posted by postman1st April 2014ce Edited 1st April 2014ce
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Comments (9) |
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| Love these notes, they make me want to go right now, which is as it should be. |
Posted by thesweetcheat1st April 2014ce |
| Cool, I want to go back right now too. |
Posted by postman 1st April 2014ce |
| Can't fault your dedication to the cause. |
Posted by CARL 2nd April 2014ce |
| It is a marvellous part of the world, would quite happily live here and explore these rocky outcrops. The springs seep out of the hillside, sometimes all you hear is running water under the stones. Lovely notes on the cairn, though a 2 am getting up shows utter dedication... |
Posted by moss2nd April 2014ce |
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Water water everywhere, sometimes I think mountains must be at least 50% water. Only we would call it dedication. |
Posted by postman 3rd April 2014ce |
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I have been thinking about Black Coppice cairn on Anglezarke and how I'd never seen anything like it, and then you posted these pictures :) Your mound is bigger and there is no stone river, but otherwise its a good fit. |
Posted by juamei3rd April 2014ce |
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Yes they're quite similar. Anglezarkes on the list but i'm strangely not terribly drawn to the place. One day. |
Posted by postman 3rd April 2014ce |
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Know of any others? I've yet to really have a go at Wales... Not sure I'd head for anglezarke as (in)frequently as I do, if I hadn't lived close enough to be up there a lot previously. |
Posted by juamei 3rd April 2014ce |
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Probably, after a while, this one maybe, http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/16116/anafon_valley_cairns.html I would get around a bit more but for some reasons that are on the edge of my mind, Wales is my chosen specialist subject. |
Posted by postman 3rd April 2014ce |
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