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October 14, 2009

Greenhill

After yesterdays sad discovery at Westertown little did I expect the same thing to happen again. On the way to Corbie Knap Greenhill farm is passed. So the perfect opportunity to visit. On asking permission to view the site I was told by the farm’s occupant that the farmer had grown tired of ploughing around the stones and had therefore dug a hole and buried them, leaving brown earthy marks. Nothing grows on this patch.

The occupant was genuinely sad but said some stones had been pulled aside and dumped round the farm, during previous site destruction. One had been set up in a neighbouring field, another beside the garden and two dumped in amongst piles of stones and farm waste. The circle must have been made of red and grey granite.

Follow the directions to Corbie Knap, Greenhill is on the north side of the road.

(Maybe safer for me to stay at home tomorrow!)

Visited 14/10/09.

Corbie Knap

Some 14 meters wide and 11/2 meters tall this cairn defys the elements and agriculture. At least here the farmer has the remains of the cairn, nearby cairns were dismantled for dykes and then ploughed into the land. Inside the cairn there is a cist which was opened then the cairn was rebuilt over it. There is bad damage to the northern side although some kerbs remain. Over the fence/wall and the southern side is more overgrown but at least it still has some shape. The cairn overlooks Cruden Bay and the North Sea so if coming here wrap up, the winds can be cruel.

Turn west, signposted Gask, just before Longhaven north of Hatton on the A90. Follow this road until it’s end, turn right and cairn is on the left about 50 meters into the field on the crest of Gask Hill, just before the Hillhead of Gask farm.

Visited 14/10/09.

October 13, 2009

Champ Grosset

Just to the east of Quessoy, this unspectacular and a bit trashed monument is in a very rural setting on the edge of woodland. It’s got five capstones still up, so worth a look-see.

Ploufragan

We found the allee couverte ‘de la Vallee’ in the small open park area of a business park near the centre of Ploufragan town, on ‘Place Nelson Mandela’.

It’s 14ms long and has quite a complete passageway but only has 2 caps up and the third nearly up. It’s got an accompanying menhir which gives it a certain ‘je ne sais pas’.

Men Marz

This mighty menhir, known locally as the ‘miracle stone’, near Brignonan Plage is a whopping 8.5ms tall and had a silly little cross plonked on the top, probably in the Middle Ages. It’s also got a cross carved into it near the bottom.

There’s a naturally occuring shelf or notch about 5ms up the menhir which people try to throw pebbles onto. The story goes that if a young woman managed to get a pebble up there, she would be married within a year. I had a go at it and failed dismally. Moth was more determined and finally got one to stay up.

It’s well worth seeing because it’s such a monster.

Quillimadec

On the northern side of the estuary of Quillimadec, near a hamlet called Larret, we found another, very denuded allee couverte on the beach.

There’s no doubt that this one is completely covered by the sea at high tide for seaweed clings of every part of every remaining stone as if it is wearing some kind of seaside camouflage.

It’s not nearly so impressive as Kernic to the east, but it does have two parallel rows of stones, a distinctive fallen capstone and a unique ambience.

Kernic

We’d seen the skeletal remains of Kernic in books and always been impressed with it, not least because it’s right on the beach, and at high tide gets (mostly) covered by the sea.

As sea levels have risen since ancient times, it’s left Kernic stranded (in the literal sense of that word, at the strand line), so you can only see all that is left of the monument at low tide.

Climb down from the dunes and among the tethered boats on the beach, below some rocky tors overlooking the estuary, the ‘bones’ of the monument are easy to spot; the passage and some kerbstones.

The mound and capstones have long ago been washed away and seaweed covers the lower portions of the stones. It’s very cool. A must-see.

Coat Luzuen

We were actually looking for Coat Menez Guen (which we never found although we must have been within inches) but found this, Coat Luzuen instead.

Having found this one, still thinking it was Coat Menez Guen, we struggled to make sense of Aubrey Burl’s notes about it in ‘Megalithic Brittany’ before realising he was describing a completely different monument.

Coat Luzuen is a grand, if neglected monument standing near the edge of field. There’s a little break in the hedge for you to get through to reach it. From what we could see through the tangle of vegetation surrounding it, it had two large flat capstones, one I guessed was 4 or 5 ms long.

You could get it to its quite big chamber easily and I sat in there for a while, out of the drizzle, looking at the tendrils of ivy curling their way around the stones.

Kerantiec

This allee couverte is another of the rare arc-boutee type. We liked it very much, standing at the lane side, it even had a picnic table. It’s in very good condition and very well kept.

In Aubrey Burl’s ‘Megalithic Brittany’ he calls it Goulet-Riec. And Pierre-Roland Giot calls it Kernediec. I’ve called it Kerantiec because that’s what it said on the sign. I’m sure it answers to all three.

Kercodonner

Here’s a nice neat one, just south of Moelan sur Mer, standing in a little field which is slightly higher than lane level so it makes it look bigger. It’s got it’s own accompanying menhir which is 2.5ms high, just a couple of metres away from one end. Easy to find, too!

Kergoustance

This 17m long allee couverte is on a field edge very close to Moelan sur Mer in a semi-rural position.

It’s got a tree growing out of one end which isn’t doing the monument much good; many of the stones have moved about and it’s a bit trashed, but overall it’s not bad. Nice big capstones, too.

Castel Rufel

This is another of those rare allee couvertes built in the arc-boutée style, that is, with slabs leaning inwards like a house of cards or tent.

It’s nowhere near as good or spectacular as Ty ar Chorriket, another arc-boutée allee couverte we saw the week before. Each individual slab is really big but the whole monument has fewer stones and lacks the complexity or completeness.

Its situated on the highest hill in the area and views from up there are marvellous. There’s a grassy farm track that leads up to it and enough room to turn your car around at the top to avoid the tedious 1200m walk.

Corskellie

When new barns were erected at Corskellie farm four large boulders appeared. After being turned over up to 56 cup and ring marks were found on one of them. Fortunately the farmer placed these near the fence at the minor road, therefore it didn’t suffer the same fate as happened at nearby Westertown.

Travelling south from Aberchirder, on the A97, cross the River Deveron at the Marnoch Bridge. Take the first right. If driving be careful this is a very hilly and twisty road. The minor road goes thru Corskellie farm after two miles. The boulders are easily spotted on the left hand side.

Visited 13/10/09.

Melus

This little gem is right up on the north coast and worth seeking out for its compact neatness. It’s well-kept and well-tended in its own parcel of land on the edge of the village of Loguivy de la Mer.

It has lost its kerbstones and anytrace of mound, but 9 capstones are still up, an it appear to have all its uprights. It’s even got its original lateral entrance. The stones are not large, but the overall building is lovely.

Morenish

First couple of pics are of a site found a while ago and due to poor light motifs just never came out too clearly. Last two were a new find on Sunday .

Rathurles

This was a truly great find and I was glad I decided to go there because it was not on my agenda on the day I saw this place. This site is lost in time and unless you set out to find it you could easily walk by without ever knowing that it was there. What is fantastic about this site is that it shows the reusing of a site from an earlier period and has a medieval church within a ringfort.

The ringfort is in excellent condition but is somewhat overgrown. It is roughly 55m in diameter with an inner and outer bank and fosse and a walkway leading to the interior. The NE portion of the rath has been levelled somewhat but still visible. This would have been an easily defendable rath as it is located on the summit of hill and would have commanded good views of the surrounding country side before becoming overgrown with trees.

Church – The church is located in the interior of the ringfort and has a small private burial plot attached to it. The church is in a poor state of repair but retains all of it walls to full height but has many trees growing inside. Built in the 15th century beam holes are still visible that would have supported attic accommodation space. Window spaces still survive in the E and W gables.

Difficulty – Access from the R491 is through a farmyard which is extremely muddy. When I arrived at the farmyard there was nobody there and there were many electric fences crossing the pathway. I decided to approach the site from the other side of the hill which proved much easier. There was still some electric fence negotiating however when I arrived at the site. The interior of the rath is a little marshy, especially around the small graveyard and many of the graves are collapsing in on themselves so I would recommend staying outside of the plot. The church is closed but the gate can easily be climbed over. The interior is hard to navigate because of the trees and undergrowth. I didn’t get as good of a look as I would have liked inside as I unusually came across a badger so I had to make a quick exit.

October 12, 2009

Borough Hill

Borough hill is a small hillfort, only an acre in size, standing on plateau gravel at the top of Borough Hill between the villages of Winterbourne and Boxford.It was discovered in 1962 and is not marked as a fort on any maps. There are some signs of man made earthworks but these might be contemporary. More of a large mound to look at, quiet flat on the top and now used as a pheasant pen.

Crec’h Quillé

This is an exceptional monument, utterly spectacular actually! It’s essentially a long barrow, 28 ms long, with a magnificent central passageway 15.8ms long. You enter from one side. It still has lovely kerbstones and plenty of high mound, up to a metre high in places.

It’s got lovely drystone walling between the kerbstones, a side entrance with original portal stones, outliers, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. Who could ask for anything more?!

Burl’s instructions on how to reach it, in our copy of ‘Megalithic Brittany’ were 24 years out of date. It’s now in a hamlet largely gobbled up by the northern ‘town-creep’ of St Quay and at the back of an ugly out-of-town strip of garages, car lots, plumbing centres and gardening emporiums.

La Chapelle Sept Saints

This is profoundly weird. If anyone is in any doubt that Christianity is any more than just an iron age idol-worshipping death cult, then they should come here.

This allee couverte has been completely integrated into the chapel and now forms its crypt. You can get into it through a little iron gate, but obviously you can’t see it’s original exterior shape anymore because it’s been swallowed up by the church.

The stones are massive and would have to be to (partially) take the weight of the chapel built over it.

Now it’s been reduced to a cave-like hidey-hole for seven crudely carved dollies, paint peeling and faded. Seven tacky wooden figures of third century Turkish saints who were drowned each stand about a foot high behind a wooden fence so you can’t reach them. Or were they the seven dwarfs? There’s even a little toy boat, presumably to remind people of the way the saints died. I actually counted eight dollies – perhaps one of them was Snow White, I wondered? No, no, it must have been the virgin Mary.

The resemblance of the figures to the kind of idols you find in animist religions in West Africa and Papua New Guinea was striking and made all the more powerful by their position in this ancient monument. Definitely worth seeing for the weird-factor alone.

Pergat

This one’s not that easy to find, but if there’s only one menhir you see in Cotes d’Armor, make it this one. Look out for a small woodland track off the lane – it is signposted though not conspicuously.

It’s 8.5ms tall and has a circumference of 12.5ms. That’s one helluva big chunk of stone! It dwarfs the piffling little menhir of only 2ms standing a few metres away from it. Curiously uneven, it morphs into different shapes as you move around it.

Stand close to it and you’ll be amazed at how tiny and insignificant you feel. Apparently its the third largest menhir in Brittany, and is 7,000 years old (so my guidebook says).

It dominates its little woodland glade and it absolutely loved it!

Although they are a long way apart it seems to form an alignment with Kerguezennec and Pedernec menhirs.

Kerguezennec

Well, it’s a big one, make no mistake, standing 6.25ms tall. From the front and back it seems enormously chunky, but from the side it’s much thinner and tapers off dramatically towards the top.

Toul an Urz

Toul an Urz means the ‘bear hole’, surely a reference to when our ursine friends still roamed the nearby forest.

One of the three remain capstones, the thinnest and largest, slopes right down to the ground. Whether it originally did so is hard to say – unlikely I’d have thought.

Traditionally, girls wanting a husband would slide down the stone. Surely they’d have been better off speed-dating?!

Badbury Hill Camp

Not much left of the earthworks but you can still follow the outside of the ramparts all the way round and in places on the south of the camp there is still traces of the ditch. Nice in the spring as it is covered in bluebells.