Latest Fieldnotes

Access: Up quite a steep slope within the heathland of the St Just complex, which is generally reasonably flat.

Visited Thursday 14 April 2005
Great place to get overview of a lot of the complex, preferably with binoculars &/or big lens.

Access: Right by main road D7, which is how we happened across it. It’s quite steep if you want to climb it – we didn’t (may be private land). I don’t think there were any fences at the time we were there.

Visited Wednesday 13 April 2005
‘Just’ a tumulus that we spotted as we headed home with no prior knowledge that existed. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing to see except the mound (& the silly cross, obviously!)

First time visit to Cothiemuir Wood, I have no idea why I didn’t come before.

Walking up from the small car park from the burial ground it’s only a couple of hundred yards along a forest path, yet totally isolated. The wood was green, but because the circle is treeless the frost had settled, which meant that with the early morning sun it was glowing white in a sea of green. My meagre snaps didn’t come close to capturing it.

Too cold to linger long, there is plenty to see and the site is reminiscent of Loudon Wood and Tyrebagger – not restored, but enough left to see and an overwhelming sense of the ancient.

Essential visit.

Don’t worry about the burial ground either – it’s well away and from what I can see will only enhance the nearby area and keep it green & open. Plus it’s small car park make it even easier to access the circle. Drive on up and follow the route on the sign.

Didn’t get the chance to explore as the gateway I’d parked in at 8am on a frozen Sunday morning suddenly became popular with van loads of farmworkers. Oh well.

The circle is shattered, but it’s an epic location and must have been something to see a few short millenia ago (in the grand scheme of things).

Pay a visit if you have the time.

Note that the island this (beautiful, from photos) allee couverte is on only displays correctly on Googlemaps when viewed as ‘satellite’ or ‘hybrid’.

Thursday 12 November 2009: Just discovered this allee couverte on a couple of websites. Seems to be actually on an island & have been unable to find out how easy it is to get to (so far...!)

camping-esperance.com/IMG/jpg/milliau_site.jpg

Maybe on our next trip....

Stuck in London on a two day Finance Course (yuck), blue skies and September sunshine warranted a tube ride to Hampstead and a walk over the heath. The barrow is sadly fenced off, but is very large and prominent. It’s covered with trees and surrounded by vegetation, so the full form is not easy to see. There may be a ditch around the barrow.

As mentioned below, it’s well worth the trip on a nice day for the views from Parliament Hill.

After visiting the Circles and a brief stop at the (largely uninteresting) church, it’s off to the Cove. Tucked away behind the (sadly closed, even though it was Monday lunchtime) Druid’s Arms, the Cove consists of three enormous megaliths, one lying flat, the other two very much upright.

Despite the somewhat surreal beer garden setting, the Cove is magnificent. Sadly the intervening buildings and hedges make it difficult to fully appreciate as part of the wider landscape and associated sites, but even so it’s a cracker. Be nice to know when the pub is open though!

After a trip to the SW Circle, a walk through the farmyard and back to the official entrance, there’s a box to leave your fee (£1.00 as at 21.9.09), together with the A4 sheets mentioned by Moth. NB: Dogs aren’t allowed in the field.

Like Rhiannon, I felt rather unmoved by the Great Circle itself. It’s huge, but many of the stones lie prostrate or are simply missing. It was also occupied by a herd of cows when I visited (they were lying down and showed no interest at all, which given some of my recent experiences was a blessed relief). To avoid them, I walked around the southern arc of the circle (they were camped out in the north) and made my way to the rather confusing collection of upright stones at the east and NE side. The “Avenue” runs from the east side of the Great Circle and includes some lovely stones, but its overall condition is rather jumbled.

The NE circle though is an absolute joy, one of the best I have visited. A nice size, it contains some massive blocks of oolitic limestone/red sandstone. Some are very squat and square, impassive as (I think someone else noted) Easter Island heads. A lovely spot, even under an overcast sky. I stayed here, undisturbed and alone, for about half an hour. At this point some of the younger members of the cow herd decided to get up and come over, so it seemed a good time to make my excuses and leave. Back round the southern side, just as some other visitors arrived to have the Circles to themselves. An absolutely essential site, especially if you live in Gloucestershire and yearn for something other than barrows for a change!

Visited 21.9.09, walking from Pensford (small local shop/post office and pub, facilities wise). Approaching Stanton Drew from south east, via footpaths from the school, this is the first site you get to.

The stones are low and grizzled, like battleships after a pounding. An odd mixture of oolitic limestone and red sandstone. They reminded me of The Horestone near Lower Swell in the Cotswolds. Although not the most impressive of sites, I felt lucky to even come here, given the history of restricted access and wrangling.

From here the footpath goes through the farm yard, although some kind of permissive path exists as a link FROM the Great Circle.

Access: Easy once you’ve navigated the maze of lanes in this area &/or the roundabouts coming out of Ploufragan. Right next to the road & there is room to stop.

Visited Wednesday 7 October 2009
Beautiful! We found it as much by luck as judgement as a result of our only map being a road atlas. It’s probably simple to reach from Ploufragan directly with a decent map, but we went spectacularly ‘round the houses’ (and industrial estates, shopping outlets, motorways, villages, suburbs....)

Coming straight from Ploufragan, you’d also pass Le Menhir du Sabot on a roundabout (not thrilling), another possible menhir (small) by the roundabout just before this site.

I found La Couëte & Grand Argantel particularly reminiscent of some of the hunebedden in the Netherlands.

Access: Looks easy but I’d guess it’s on private land & is so close to the farm buildings that I suspect asking first would be a good idea.

‘Visited’ Wednesday 7 October 2009: Saw this as we drove past but didn’t stop as time was extremely tight on our last day.

Seems to be a rather curiously-shaped large natural rock with a few possible orthostats ‘behind’ it. From photos, it looks more like Margot’s sunlounger than her bed....

Access: Unknown, as we did not find it. We had no real instructions on how to find it, but had we looked carefully at megalithes-breton.fr we probably wouldn’t have had any problems....

I’m sorry, I can’t find any way of linking directly to a site page on megalithes-breton.fr I can only sy look under Cotes d’Armor on the horizontal menu, then under Ploufragan.

Access: Easy to see as you round the roundabout! Traffic may be a problem for stopping or actually reaching the stone....

‘Visited’ Wednesday 7 October 2009
This is a small menhir (presumably) re-erected actually on the roundabout. It was difficult to stop & rather underwhelming despite having been split by lightning, so we didn’t get any photos.

There seemed to be another small menhir on the outside of the road around the roundabout, roughly to the east, but I can find no provenance for it.

Roughly 1.9m high and 1.2m in diameter at the base and tapering towards the top. The stone is aligned E-W. I could find no other information about the stone apart from what was in the Archaeological Inventory of Carlow.

Clearly visible from the road.

Access: Easy once you’ve navigated the maze of lanes in this area &/or the roundabouts coming out of Ploufragan. Right next to the road & there is room to stop just up the hill on the opposite side of the road.

Visited Wednesday 7 October 2009
A little beauty! We found it as much by luck as judgement as a result of our only map being a road atlas. It’s probably simple to reach from Ploufragan directly with a decent map, but we went spectacularly ‘round the houses’ (and industrial estates, shopping outlets, motorways, villages, suburbs....)

Coming straight from Ploufragan, you’d also pass Le Menhir de Sabot on a roundabout (not thrilling), another possible menhir (small) by the roundabout & Allée couverte de la Couëte (beautiful) and Le Lit de Margot (a rock) just before this site.

Petit Argentel allee couverte is a little south of here, but all we knew was that it was down the hill.... Even ‘down the hill & take the first left’ looks like it would have allowed us to find it, going by Googlemaps.

I found Grand Argantel (& la Couëte) particularly reminiscent of some of the hunebedden in the Netherlands.

There are some ‘interesting’ big stones in the trees directly across road. These could just be field-clearance, but didn’t half look to me a bit like an extremely trashed allee couverte (or something). Notably, some of the more ‘significant-looking’ stones are well rooted in the ground.

‘Visited’ Saturday 26 September 2009
We tried to find this using Aubrey Burl’s very basic instructions in ‘Megalithic Brittany’ (Thames & Hudson 1985). To be fair to Dr Burl, he doesn’t recommend only using his instructions but getting a decent map as well. For this one, I’d certainly agree!!

It should be easy using the Googlemap coordinates I’ve provided, based on megalithes-breton.fr

Dr Burl just says go to Ban al Lan near Portsall & that the ‘tomb is st the end of the creek.’ Unfortunately, at Ban al Lan there is a very obvious lovely creek in a beautiful valley, which we spent sometime exploring without megalithic joy!

On returning I’ve done a little research, and the allee couverte seems to be on the headland to the east of the creek. A few hundred yards to the east of the creek on the D27, there is even a road in that direction (north) called Rue de Guilligui!

This looks like a nice little rather knocked-about allee, but with a particularly ludicrous christian cross slapped on top. Hope I get another chance to see it for myself!

‘Visited’ Sunday 3 October 2009
This is a big menhir with a silly christian cross on top, which we tried to find using Aubrey Burl’s very basic instructions in ‘Megalithic Brittany’ (Thames & Hudson 1985). To be fair to Dr Burl, he doesn’t recommend only using his instructions but getting a decent map as well.

Much to our surprise, we couldn’t find it. Burl says it is ‘after the last houses on the NE (R) of the road to Melgven.’ From Googlemaps, this still seems to be true, but what Burl doesn’t mention is that the menhir seems to be on the other side of the road!

Having checked the wonderfully informative & reliable megalithes-breton.fr on our return, the menhir is to the north (west) of the Melgven road in a wood behind some houses.

There are other sites around here, including another menhir (Kergleuhant or Kerdunus) & a dolmen (Loch-Korrigan).

‘Visited’ Sunday 3 October 2009
We tried to find this using Aubrey Burl’s instructions in ‘Megalithic Brittany’ (Thames & Hudson 1985). To be fair to Dr Burl, he doesn’t recommend only using his instructions but getting a decent map as well.

We could see nothing where he describes, which is some way south of this location, nearer the D24 and south of the N165.

The roads & undergrowth etc there may have changed a bit since 1985, which may account for us not being able to find anything there. (We couldn’t even identify the ‘fork in the road’ on the D24 that he mentions.)

But it seems from further reading (’La Bretagne des Megalithes’ by Pierre-Roland Giot and the extremely reliable megalithes-breton.fr for example) that if there is something where Burl descibes, it’s not Coat-Menez-Guen.

The coordinates used to post this page seem to be the correct ones. You can even see what looks like the tomb on Googlemaps.

Burl himself says “there are other but disrupted allees-couvertes” in the area. Perhaps he mixed the locations up? Who knows.

The good news was that in zipping around the area we spotted Coat Luzuen in our road atlas & found that instead, though it’s not as interesting as this ‘semi arc-boutee’ sounds!

Annoyingly, after we’d finished there, I insisted that we should continue north on the little road that passes it. When we reached the farm at the north end, we turned back, but from Googlemaps it looks as if we could have walked to Coat-Menez-Guen from there!

Prior to a nightly stop over in the Elan Hills, I take the opportunity to visit this obscure stone circle in predictably poor weather. Hey ho.... this is Wales after all, I guess. Approaching from Llandrindod Wells, an attractive town sited within a loop in the Afon Ithon – and judging by a nearby Roman Fort (Castell Collen) and castle (Cefnllys), its strategic value was evident from the off – I skirt a large lake (complete with dodgy ‘sea monster’ sculpture) and, passing the obligatory golf course, park near the steep access road to Carregwiber. I decide to walk from here and spare my already battered car further mischief. Not that the crab-apple tree dropping copious fruit onto my roof gives a monkey’s about that. At least it wasn’t my head, I suppose.

To be fair it’s quite a walk, verging on a proper hillwalk (so an OS map is essential), overlooked in the initial stages by a hillfort. Nice.... Follow the track to the SE, ignoring any turnings, until you meet another track running along the ridge of Gilwern Hill above and beyond. Follow this to the left until, just before a prominent copse of trees, you should head eastwards towards the summit of Gelli Hill. This is crowned by a trig point and a rather large burial cairn, boasting a superb view of the Wye Valley and The Radnor Forest rising to the east – the conical summit of Whimble obvious and alluring. Something about the shape, I guess.

The circle itself is sited a little to the west of the 1,440ft summit, the stones not very big, and with some apparently modern ‘additions’. But orthostat size is of little relevance here, as I’m sure the erectors would confirm if someone could invent a time machine and go have a word. Up here location is everything, the stones simply demarking a sacred space. No need to impress when the landscape says all that needs to be said. And then some. But needless to say I am impressed. What a great vibe!

Well worth the effort, despite the fearful hammering I get from Mother Nature!

3pm Sunday 8 November 2009

The hedges along the tiny single lane B road were full of rusty orange beech leaves and crimson hawthorn berries. Myself and Samspade parked at the gate at the bottom of the field. A low winter sun strafed the stubble in the fields. The souterrain field has a crop of winter greens this year. This meant a longer walk along the field to the left side then up until we were level with the fenced in overgrown patch in the middle of the field. The souterrain’s in there. We made our way across the crops along a tractor wheel rut to avoid trampling the crop.
Samspade had never been before and was looking forward to seeing this site. I’d been many times and had brought waterproof trousers, wellies, a torch and my wee camera. This souterrain can be very wet and the crawl/ crouch on the way in can leave you caked in Midlothian glaur. True to form, the floor was a sea of muddy water and squelching clay. Despite the damp and the hanging “bead curtains” of dripping wet grass roots Samspade was gobsmacked at the place and we walked around taking pictures and soaking in the quiet still calm of this unique place. Samspade picked up a beautiful flint scraper from the edge of a puddle.
The first lintel upon entering the souterrain is covered with many cup marks (one is huge). We wondered if it had previously been a standing stone nearby which had been re-used. The other huge lintel stones could well have been standing stones too, for although there is evidence of working/ shaping on some of them, their shapes seem in marked contrast to the neatly squared and dressed roman blocks in the walls. Perhaps originally the “Pegasus” was a bit of roman graffitti on a standing stone?
When we finally crawled out blinking in the last rays of the afternoon, the view out over the Firth of Forth was spectacular. The twin peaks of Fife’s Lomond Hills sat high above the trail of smoke from Kirkcaldy. The strange hillock two fields below was illuminated by the dying rays of the sun making it look even more unnatural.
We rounded the day off with a trip to a garden centre to pick up bark chips for Samspade’s garden. The centre was full of Christmas tack. We bought a bag of bark and left as quickly as we could, trying not to let the tacky tinsel and glitter outshine the quiet gloom of the souterrain.

Access: Samuel Lewis in ‘Guide to the Menhirs and other Megaliths of Central Brittany’ says this is on the right (west) of the dead-end road to Kerangle farm. It’s not, it’s on the left (east). He’s placed it correctly on the map, but unfortunately in this case the map is on a different page. Sod’s law meant that we followed his instructions instead of his map!

So, as you clear a line of trees to the east of the road approaching the farm at the end of the road, keep your eyes peeled to the left (east). At the far side of a large field with woods beyond, you should be able to spot the monument if it’s not in crop (though it was quite overgrown when we first saw it).

It was a bit of a slog around the edge of the ploughed field, but if it had been in crop, we would never have spotted it!

Visited Wednesday 30 September 2009
Thought we’d missed this one as the field on the right (west) was in crop & we thought that’s where it was (see above). Tried to ask at the farm. but there was no answer

Luckily, as we gave up & drove back down the road, Jane spotted something on the far side of a field to the east.

It was a fair way off & we couldn’t be sure, but especially as this was our last site of the day & we wouldn’t be back, I decided to trog around the field edge.

For much of the walk, my view was blocked by trees, but as I cleared them it looked like this was probably it, but it looked overgrown & trashed.

How wrong I was! Once I’d tramped down a lot of fern, bracken & bramble (less hard work than I expected) I could see quite a cool little allee couverte. (All my photos are post-’gardening’!)

It’s not in great condition, but I still found it very pleasing. Lewis speculates that it may have been built with one of the capstones only supported on one side, but I thought this unlikely. I may be wrong of course!

Access: When we were there it was in deep crop (see photo under ‘maps etc’) & we drove straight past. As you reach the area of the dolmen, at a t-junction at the top of a hill look out for this ‘telegraph pole’ with signs on.

The dolmen is along a path starting a few yards to the left of the (French-style) telegraph pole. You can just make it out in the photo – near the back of the car. (We interpreted the signs as meaning drive along the road to the left & spent ages looking for the dolmen in the wrong place!)

The path was narrow & a little rough with the maize encroaching, but would otherwise probably be pretty easy.

Wednesday 30 September 2009
A nice simple but quite large dolmen. A bit underwhelming when we were there as it was claustrophobically enclosed in high maize crop, and the weather was unpleasant.

Without the crop and with some kind of setting visible, I suspect it would be far more impressive.

There is also a stele somewhere nearby. I think it’s in the same field but the photo I’ve seen makes it look pretty unimpressive & the chances of finding it in the maize seemed slim!

We visited there today, late evening just as the sun was setting. The ‘vibe’ seemed ok.

We were fascinated by the near by tree hung with ladies knickers! Does anyone know what that’s all about??

Access: Easy. Drive to the church & get out of the car!

Visited Wednesday 30 September 2009
Not much to add to what Jane said, except that although we read that these are the remains of a cromlech, in ‘Megalithic Brittany’ Burl says it they are the remnants of an allee couverte.

Giot in ‘La Bretagne des Megalithes’ reckons it’s the base of a neolithic tumulus.

This seems strange to us, though I guess it’s possible if these are strangely varied & spectacular kerbstones.

Visit the site regularly seems to be on a Ley line, also one visit I stood on top and had a sense of tingling and power generating up through my feet and out of the top of my head. Asked the wife to come up on top of the mound and she described the same sensation. Another visit and we stood again on top of the Barrow , a Hare meandered up to the top of the Tump and stopped between me and the wife, looked towards Beeston Castle, at us and then ambled off in no hurry across the field nearby, it kept stopping and looking back as if to check we were still transfixed with gobs open in amazement. Last time a Raven sat in one of the trees and only shut up when we got to the top of the Tump it was given some of me butties and again was extremely tame. Magical place, pity the townies next to it cant seem to stop chucking crap over the fence onto it.