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 Re: Favourite site visited 2019 12 messages | Select a forum: |
| I found it hard to restrict this to a favourite site so I took the liberty of doing a year review. Moylehid, on Belmore mountain in Fermanagh, has three megalithic sites - a court tomb, lost in vegetation, a ruined, diminutive passage tomb, and the real star, and probably my favourite site of the year, a ring cairn. We suffered to get here, traversing the tumbledown, boggy deforested and forested mess on the east side of the mountain. They’re working here, thinning out and felling the pines, but this was one where we nearly gave up, my obsessive determination pushing us to the limit. And then it was revealed, in its clearance, quiet all around and intruded on by us interlopers, deer whistling in alarm, scared by our presence. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/19031/moylehid.html Moneylahan was no hike at all, though the field it’s in is waterlogged, even in summer. The tomb itself is wrecked but keeps a lot of its structure. However, Benwiskin is the real star here. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/14114/moneylahan.html The walk from the car park (yes indeed) close to Ravensdale passage grave (Clermont Cairn), 510m across to Carnawaddy cairn, 475m, and back, on the Cooley peninsula, was medium core, but the views north and south as the cloud cleared were memorable. The higher Mournes across Carlingford Lough were still shrouded in cloud. Directly south it seemed that we could see all the way to Wexford. The peninsula stretched out in front of us, about to take off into space. https://www.themodernantiquari[...]ite/16075/ravensdale_park.html + https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/19429/carnawaddy.html A news story recently of a helicopter mountain rescue here reminded me of our day on the hill. I’d read Stefan Bergh had excavated here and he’d compared it to Mullaghfarna. On the edge of the Burren, you could be on the edge of the world up here, the monuments dwarfed into insignificance by the magnificence of the landscape. https://www.themodernantiquari[...]rlough_hillknockycallanan.html On a scorcher of a day at the height of summer the walk up to the caves and then on to the summit by a circuitous route to the south of the ridge completed a Sligo ambition. https://www.themodernantiquari[...]te/3096/kesh_corran_cairn.html + https://www.themodernantiquari[...]/site/19251/caves_of_kesh.html I’d looked down on Mullaghfarna from the main ridge of the Carrowkeel complex. I’ve looked down on it from other peoples’ photographs. I’ve imagined it from maps, but I’d never visited it. What a strange and powerful place and easily accessible. And then I climbed up to the cairns perched above it and looked down on it again. Was it a village? Or a seasonal gathering place? I prefer the village theory, but only because I want it to be. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/3095/mullaghfarna.html Sligo has so much to reveal - the Carrickglass or Labby Rock dolmen down the hill from this is essential - but you would do well not to miss this, the eastern edge of the Lough Arrow prehistoric complex that includes Carrowkeel/Keshcorran. Just another hilltop cairn? Maybe, but that erratic says something else. https://www.themodernantiquari[...]m/site/19199/barroe_north.html Most of my favourites this year required effort. Nearby Baurdnadomeeny and Shanballyedmond are spectacular, more-or-less-roadside sites, but this was a two mile trek down country lanes and across fields and forestry, almost lost and given up on. We almost gave up but, not for the last time this year, we said try a bit more, it’s around here somewhere. And there it was, in the same place it had been since the bronze age. https://www.themodernantiquari[...]site/8009/cureeny_commons.html Ah ah Aghnacliff. Thirteen years after my first visit, on the way to elsewhere, how could I not stop? Maddest of the maddest, Aghnacliff is a gift from the ancestors that says it wasn’t, and shouldn’t be, all hardship and survival - megalithic flair extraordinaire. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/2015/aghnacliff.html So you wear your waterproof (LOL) walking boots, prepared for the 3km hike from the east that looks like the shortest and sanest way to this very isolated of tombs. You’re well into it when you realise that three quarters of your journey is going to entail traversing a waterlogged bog and you keep asking your companion, ‘are you sure you want to do this?’ and he keeps telling you to fuck off, that he’s not going to let you off the hook for bringing him on another mad excursion to see a bunch of rocks. 200 metres away from the tomb relief is at hand and the ground dries out and you’re on limestone pavement and as mad as it all has been, you’re here at one of the most complete wedge tombs still in existence. And just up the way is one of the longest cairns you’ve ever seen and you’ve nearly forgotten that you still have to return back across the swamp from hell, feet soaked to shit. One of those once-in-a-life excursions, finished at Largy court tomb as a little bonus. Spare socks in the car and spare shoes. Aaaaaaah. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/19007/aghamore.html Here’s to 2020. Happy new year to everyone. Reply | with quote |  5th January 2020ce 12:33 In reply to: Favourite site visited 2019 (thelonious) |
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