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Pentre Ifan and more Preseli proceedings…

The area around Newport, Pembrokeshire is *so* rich in ancient sites that it’s very hard to know where to start looking. I imagine that it’s similar for FourWinds ‘over and out there somewhere’ in Ireland. And when time is so limited and you have to fit in trips to various wonderful beaches for your kids’ sakes (and your own sanity), you have to pick and choose with care.

On Monday 26 May, I was feeling particularly crap. The weather was crap. I heard news that my Dad was in hospital after a fall, which was crap and the whole world seemed crap, crap, crap.

A brief outing that afternoon took us to the mighty Eglwyswrw motte and bailey earthwork. The pronunciation of this village caused much amusement in our part of the convoy: iglooswerewere, eglisewerer iglooizwerer…. We never found out. But we did find a huge, tall and wide structure, now inhabited by a couple of frisky ponies – from what period we couldn’t tell. It felt medieval to me, but I have no basis for making that assertion, except that it wasn’t too destroyed. Like Nevern Castell, which we were to see later in the week, it was probably a medieval build over iron age foundations.

A few miles further up the road, Castell Pen yr Allt was certainly an iron age or before enclosure on farmland at Llantood. We got permission from the farmer to investigate and had to tackle a small herd of twitchy bullocks who got quite excited that they had so many visitors. Massive ditches and ramparts enclosed a small interior centre, but a quarter of the earthwork had apparently been ploughed up in the 1950s so its sense of enclosing anything at all was now lost. I liked this place a lot. But I still felt crap.

In fact, I was feeling so crap, I just wanted to sit quietly and be on my own. Down the road was Poppit Sands at SN154488, a wide sandy beach on which my kids could be set off the leash. They went rockpooling and I sat near the dunes trying to get my head together. I made a sketch and that helped. Later we returned to Pentre Ifan for 20 minutes, just because we could. We had it to ourselves for the whole time. Nice.

Tues 27 May: Feeling a bit better, me and the kids went off with Cloudhigh and JP. Nevern Castell is a fine place and although much of what remains visible today (which is quite a significant structure!) is medieval, it is known to be built on iron age foundations. This gave us a taste of things to come later in the afternoon at Castell Henllys, a reconstruction of an iron age village in its original location.

The roundhouses blew me away, and the detail of the interiors was wonderous! I loved everything about this place, and apart from the lack of sunshine, it looked and smelled just like being back in an African village: the smoke seeping out through the deep thatched rooves, the inky blackness of the interior of the huts, the smouldering logs, the woven withy fences, the cow shite and mud walls, the dust underfoot, the rough branches holding up essential furnishings, the sense of constant activity needed to maintain the place; rethatching, weaving and so on. I would have been quite happy ‘surviving the iron age’. I felt quite at home here and it rekindled my spirits.

Weds 28 May: In the bright, hot sunshine, Cleo and I set off early to walk the coastal path section around Dinas Head, a twitcher’s paradise! We saw buzzards, guillemots, kittiwakes, gulls, a pair of stonechats, chaffinches and kestrels as we climbed up over the headland and sat gasping for breath and at the staggering views of slate-striped cliffs plunging into the pthalo blue sea hundreds of feet below. Being embarrassingly unfit, we took our time, but enjoyed every moment until we finally dropped back down past an enclosure onto the beach at Cwm-yr-Eglwys, where the rest of the party had set up camp. We flopped onto the beach with ice creams and promptly got our white flesh nicely burned in the early summer sunshine.

Later that evening, I headed off with treaclechops and Mavis to Gors Fawr stone circle. A large circle, perhaps 15ms across or more, consisting of widely spaced out low stones, nothing more than 2 feet high, one or two fallen. It reminded me of the Derbyshire circles a little. It lies in wide open moorland, punctuated by sheep, sheep poo, clumps of marsh grass, boggy areas, low growing, viciously-spined gorse bushes, which at this time of year sang with bright cadmium yellow. The sun was low in the sky and cast harsh shadows which treaclechops struggled to soften with her camera. The whole place seemed very open, very horizontal. I made a quick sketch, emphasising its horizontality by sitting cross-legged on the grass to get a worms-eye-viewpoint.

We drove back to Newport via Pentre Ifan, For me, my fourth visit, for treaclechops and Mavis, their first. What can I say about Pentre Ifan that I haven’t already? I look forward to reading treaclechops’ account of her reactions to that most breathtaking of sites...

Thurs29 May: With Cleo and Rupert anxious to get out and ‘do something’, we drove out in the blazing sunshine (again! yippee!) towards the soaring, dramatic cliffs of Ceibwr Bay via Llech-y-Tripped, which lies up a track leading towards Penlan farm. You have to hold your nerve as you drive up the deeply tractor-rutted track and pray the undercarriage of your car isn’t removed by the central raised strip! Fearing it would be, we parked at a point wide enough to let a tractor through and got out and walked the last few hundred metres. Although it’s on private land, the construction of a wooden stile implied it was OK to go and view it. The great thick capstone, resembling a grand piano, is held up by only three of the five stones and looked a little precarious, but we liked this very much.

We continued on to Ceibwr Bay, 2 kms up the lane, where we sat blinkingly in the brightness, cooled by the breeze which whipped up great waves crashing into the wild contortions of the black slate cliffs. The cliffs were topped with grassy green ‘icing’ and great patches of pink sea thrift.

‘Isn’t Mother Nature a wonderful sculptress?’ I sat back at Newport Sands the whole aftrnoon and considered this question as I sunbathed and Cleo and Rupes paddled joyfully in the surf.

Fri 30 May: Last day: Driving out to the west side of Fishguard brings you to two marvellous attractions: Carreg Samson and a farm producing its own cheese! Ah! Blessed are the cheesemakers! (and indeed manufacturers of all dairy products) for they shall sensuously thrill my palette with the food of the gods!
Treaclechops, Rupie and me couldn’t be arsed with the tour to see how it was made (undoubtedly very interesting), but instead headed straight for the farm shop, where we carefully tasted little morsels in order to fully consider which kind of glorious nutrition we should purchase. Organic? Mature? With a little blue, perhaps? As treaclechops rightly observed, for a moment I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

With palettes still tingling, we continued on to Carreg Samson. Thrilling! The view is awesome, surely one of the finest placings of a dolmen in these parts? It certainly rivals Pentre Ifan for sheer gloriousness. But what of the cromlech itself? Outwardly it appears to be just another typical dolmen. But look more closely and you see a puzzling construction of two kinds of stone. (I’m no geologist, as I’m about to reveal!) One kind is a smooth bluestone type, the other a lumpy-ricepuddingy kind, shot through with stars and splats of quartz, edged with black. The capstone is of the latter and deserves particular observation. I studied it for as long as I could without getting ‘in shot’, as treaclechops was photographing.

Gors Fawr — Images

31.05.03ce

Castell Henllys — Images

31.05.03ce

Castell Pen yr Allt — Fieldnotes

02.06.03ce

Massive ditches and ramparts enclosed a small interior centre, but a quarter of the earthwork had apparently been ploughed up in the 1950s so its sense of enclosing anything at all was now lost. I liked this place a lot.

As its on private land, ask the farmer before you enter, as you might disturb his bullocks.

Llech-y-Drybedd — Images

31.05.03ce

Castell Henllys — Fieldnotes

02.06.03ce

The roundhouses blew me away, and the detail of the interiors was wonderous! I loved everything about this place, and apart from the lack of sunshine, it looked and smelled just like being back in an African village: the smoke seeping out through the deep thatched rooves, the inky blackness of the interior of the huts, the smouldering logs, the woven withy fences, the cow shite and mud walls, the dust underfoot, the rough branches holding up essential furnishings, the sense of constant activity needed to maintain the place; rethatching, weaving and so on. I would have been quite happy ‘surviving the iron age’. I felt quite at home here and it rekindled my spirits.