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Hafodty

Standing Stone / Menhir

Fieldnotes

From Henryd, the small lanes heading east and uphill are only just navigable, they are tight and often steep covered with leaves and the odd slow moving tractor, they can be tricky for those not used to such places.
Basically, it's straight east from Henryd, ignore right turn take the right fork, straight on ignore next right, then take next right again, go up here, all the way baby.
The standing stone is in the field beyond the one on your right, north. If you've got better eyes than me you might be able to spot it from the end of the lane.
You could now jump the fence and the next wall and you'd be there, in the same field as the stone, but it's not easy getting over the wall. Better following the path, which is easy to find and to follow. But it still isn't that easy to reach, over a gate and then one wall, whilst all the time keeping an eye out for the good sir farmer. Who was out and about screaming at his sheep as they blithely went the wrong way.

Upon entering the stones field I hunkered down in a corner and waited for farmer to get off his land, or at least further away from me, duly, he did as I wished and I strolled over to this lovely stone. There are many shapes a standing stone can take, this is the tall, slender, smooth, and circular-ish in plan type(bar one straight side). It has stripes on it too, from rubbing ruminants.
This is a brilliant stone, perfect in shape, a tall phallic missile. At the big stones foot is a smaller stone, much smaller, it is a dead ringer now for Menhir de Champ-Dolent in Brittany ( http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/9945/menhir_de_champdolent.html ) it's just missing a few feet.
Something just has to be said about the view from the stone, It's just on the edge of Snowdonia national park, so as you'd expect it's not a bad view, as they go. West goes up hill so not much there, North is Conwy, river, town and castle. East is down in to the often misty Conwy river valley, and south is the profile of Cerrig Y Ddinas defensible hill top enclosure, and Tal y Fan.

A totally fabulous site, with lots of other nearby little beauties.
postman Posted by postman
22nd November 2014ce
Edited 22nd November 2014ce

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