Finding this site was relatively easily as we were holidaying in Bruernish.
Just before the small village of Northbay, on Barra's east side, there is a signpost indicating Bruernish. Take this and head east until a cattle grid at Boggach. Park here and jump the fence heading north, the east of the very small sea loch. I walked up the west side of fence, not much room but enough. In front, a headland will be seen, and 70m north of that is the dun.
The 70m is an easy guess as the causeway is that length, on my visit submerged. However, the dun can be easily viewed and some some stonework remains in place. Elsewhere vegetation is taking over or walls have fallen.
From the dun/broch at Dun Chaolais, I walked along the track on the north side of Bagh Chornaig, jumped over a few boggy bits and walked almost straight to the chamber cairn.
Bizarrely used as a hen house many years ago the oval shaped cairn has tremendous views of stunning seascapes, and going by the eagle that flew past the chickens did well to be out of view.
Not many of the stones remain, the main passage remains, the chamber is in a bad way and has had a variety of uses including the aforementioned chickens suggest.
Most of the cairn material has been removed, however the grassy areas reveal the width and oval shape being approximately 12m by 10m, not much height, 0.6m.
We parked in a small car park at the west end of Bagh Chornaig, walked west along the road then uphill to the north west to reach this impressive site.
There is plenty of visible wall built wall to see, there is plenty of fallen stonework to see as well. Like all of these things if there was time, the money, the people etc to give this place a gentle clean up would a Clachtoll type site might appear. Hard to tell but the aerial photographs suggest that something once stood here that was impressive, with a wee clean-up it could be impressive again.
Superb site, nearby a few of these odd semi circular sites which must be something but my friend Brannigan doesn't exactly give good co-ordinates for many of them.
You can't really miss the Dun on Vatersay once near the village and cafe, it rather obvious. We approached from the south.
Although very ruinous there remains a few remnants of the defences. The west defence is natural whilst foundation stones reveal the shape of the site in the north, east and south.
Another one of these confusing stone settings worthy of mention. From the nearby cairn keep walking north towards the dun. To the west of the main path is this possible four poster, with an added boulder to confuse matters.
Whatever it is, it is impressively sited, with stunning views north. Like T, I discovered a load of these sites, Brannigan's book is good but doesn't help in finding the sites. Still I'm pretty sure I'll be back and I'll take his book next time.
Walking north from Cuithe Heillanish you'll see loads of peculiar stones and shapes. One of the more definite is this 6m x 1m cairn, Brannigan counted 9 kerbs, I counted 13.
Nice site, great views north towards Castlebay and the hills beyond on Barra.
Ignoring the walk on the notice board we went via Bienn Chuidir and then headed west in an attempt to find standing stones that proved invisible. Undaunted we climbed over the east side of Beinn Ruilibreac to walk into a small valley then headed south. By this time direction posts had come into view, also into view on a small ridge appeared the standing stone, Cuithe Heillanish.
The stone stands at 1.7m high having great views to the islands south of Vatersay. An enclosure or dry stane dyke seems to have included the stone.