Visited 29.3.2009, approaching from Great Witcombe to the SW.
A small promontory encampment, coming to a point at the western end before dropping sharply off the Cotswold edge. The enclosure is covered in trees, so the interior is obscured and the views across to the Malverns are obstructed.
The rampart at the eastern end is low and, at its southern end, almost imperceptible.
Visited Witcombe R***n V***a and Birdlip Camp on 29.3.2009. Sitting in the sunshine at the Villa, the proximity to the two Iron Age settlements at Crickley and Birdlip is striking. The villa was constructed originally during the first century AD, during the early years of the occupation. Evidence of late Iron Age habitation and funerary practices has been found at Crickley and at Barrow Wake, which lies between Crickley and Birdlip.
Crickley had been an important high-status centre for 4,000 years by the time the Romans came, so the builders of the villa must have been able to impress their friends with the view of these former bastions of power.
Gjerde church, in the center of Etnesjøen, just across the street from the hotell Fugl Fønix.
A 5,25 m high, standing stone with engraved cross. The stone might be a remain from an old pre-cristian burialsite.
There are several sites with petroglyphs in Etne. Especially along the lake Stordalsvatnet. There are two large stones dotted with petroglyphs.
From E134 take the road down to Frette. To the first stone, Duesteinen, take the road to the left just before the bridge at Frette, just past the second Vinje-farm (about 600 m along the road).
Bruteigsteinen is a large rock covered with petroglyphs. Dating of petroglyphs is difficult, 1300-500BCE (bronze-age) has been suggested for this stone.
It is close to the farmbuildings of the Flåte farm. There is a parkingspace 200 meters before you reach the houses on the farm, go through the gate and follow the path along the stream (uphill)
The first time the returning winter-sun reaches above the Flåte-skaret it shines on the stone.
From Etnesjøen towards Skånevik. Please note that the road can be narrow in parts. It may be just as easy to take E134 and the northern approach to Skånevik (Håland, route 48). But with a small car and low speed, the road around the coast can be a treat, its not much traffic (at least it wasn’t the 2 times I have driven it).
There is a sign from the main road towards Ebna. Drive down the hill to the sea, and park behind the barn.
There are 3 mounds. One with 4 standing stones, placed in the corners of the mound.
The mounds are thought to be from the older iron-age. In the 19th century there were 10 mounds. There are also several non-visible graves. One contained material dated to about 400 CE.
The mounds have been digged through the ages. One Bertil Ebna (1719-1769) is supposed to have found both silver and gold, and was rewarded with ill health (as he rightly should be).
The place is scenic, placed close to the sea and in the right season snowcowered mountains in the horizon.
Exebury is a promontory fort defended on the West by
the River Beaulieu and on the East by a bank and outer ditch. Access to this sit is limited as it is on private property occupied by ponies. You can see the outer earthworks from the lane leading to the farmhouse and to the eastern end you can see the edge of a second bank suggesting that there were two banks and a ditch originally but part of this could be medieval. Nice spot overlooking the river Beaulieu and the Solent.
Castle Hill is situated in a stretch of downland between Brighton and Lewes in an area of outstanding beauty owned by the National Trust. The easiest way to get to it is to leave your vehicle near the houses on the northern edge of Woodingdean (off the Falmer Road, B2123) and then make your way round the hideous radio mast towards the valley at Standean Bottom. You can either follow the valley all the way round until you come round to the northern edge and then up the hill towards the enclosure or you can take a short cut down to the bottom of the valley and straight up the hill. The enclosure is at the top of the hill, roughly rectangular in shape and has splendid views back across the majestic valley and south towards the cliffs and sea between Brighton and Newhaven. The banks are only a couple of feet high now but still quite distinct with a few depressions visible inside them, possibly from huts. There’s a bank and ditch which extends from the western side of the enclosure for a short distance down towards the valley. It feels like an outpost from the slightly more busy South Downs Way but you’re really not that far from other major earthworks at Whitehawk and Hollingbury on the outskirts of Brighton and indeed it’s not difficult to come across something on almost any hilltop in this area. Obviously a very populace place even thousands of years ago.
The remains of the stone circle at Cairnton can be seen from the A97 just south of its junction with the B9001 opposite Westertown farm. It is a steep but short uphill walk from the road. The recumbent and the west flanker remain. Views down the valley towards Huntly are tremendous, what a place to look south!
This small engraved rock are very close to Ceresa 3 cup marked stone, in the same place.
The engraves remember me the rock art of the Valley of Wonder, on Mount Bego (France).
I found this rock at the end of Strada Megalitica.
This big stone have about 4 m diameter, but the particularity who attract me are his position.
The rock are on the middle of a tree-circle. I believe that rock have an altar function.
Very suggestive and peaceful place.
Idbury is an univallate plateau-fort on the Oxfordshire Border with Gloucestershire. It has been virtually ploghed out now. I walked the site and could make out the edge of the camp nearly all the way round and on the east and north sides where the land drops away more it was quite easy. The photos don’t really do the site the justice you need to visit it to appreciate it fully.
These are found half way up the fairly steep Kirk Hill behind Logie Newton farm. There are three white quartz cairns, which Burl describes as the kerb variety. Two are clearly visible whilst one, the west, is almost grown over. A standing stone behind the bungalows shows the way. The farm is half way along the Thorneybank-Fisherford road. The circle at Upper Third can be found along the road towards Thorneybank.
Access to the camp is via a permissive footpath off mud lane in Restrop near Purton. it is An Iron Age multivallate hillfort. What I found unusual about the site was that the northern side of the earthworks was almost completely straight, maybe to impress visitors to the site. The entrance to the east where the farm gate is would appear to be the orignal.
A large univallate iron age hill fort . The earthworks on the western side consist of 2 banks and a ditch which are in good condition but appear to have been flattened out in between by farm traffic. To the north there are various remains of ditch and bank but elsewhere there seems little sign of the original earthworks as there is a farm to the east and a farm track cuts across the southern side of the site. This track would appear to follow the original edge of the site. A nice spot though with really good views on all sides except the south.
The donkeys are still there, and so are the dogs, Huskies by the look of them but they were mercifully quiet. The place does look like its all going to fall apart at any minute, I don’t know if the big stoney mound that the chamber partly sits on and in is part of the chambers mound or if it’s just a natural outcrop. (edit: it is)
Standing on the mound with the mines just a hundred yards away and the chamber right behind you is it obvious to assume the occupant/s of the Greyhounds lair were big cheeses at the mine, what did they do? what was there role in the mine ?
Went on holiday to Llandudno dozens of times as a child, now were planning a return in the summer, what goes around comes around.
Absolutely incredible !!!
This is one of those places that should be more famous than it is, as well known as “that place in Wiltshire” or Avebury or anywhere, I think the only reason is, its not easily accessable, its on a mountain, in Llandudno, from the welsh capital its as far away as possible and still be in the same country.
The four of us had the entire subterranian mine to ourselves, hard hats donned, we made our way through sometimes thin low tunnels, we peered down tiny shafts that lead only into darkness.
Malachite still lingers in places and when you go down to level two you begin to appreciate just how big this place might be, some of the miners were only 5-7 years old, shocking isnt it, untill I think, how my kids want to go everywhere I do and do everything I do, these underage miners may have liked working with their parents. Sometimes the tiny tunnels look like its only just been abandoned. The tunnels go down nine levels and god knows how far they go, perhaps the descedants of the bronze age miners are still down there tunneling away, Morlock like.
Upon exiting the self guided tour we find ourselves just five yards away from the entrance, funny how when your underground theres no way to know exactly where you are.
The bridge over the entire place is great. There is a small mine entrance that can no longer be explored due to stalagmites and stalagtites, then when you think you can’t be any more bowled over you find out that 90% of the mines are still to be uncovered.
What an incredible place.
The Area 51 of Anglesey.
The first time we came, a few years ago, we payed at plas newydd and made our way over to the field with the giant, we made friends and went home, great!
This time was different, i’m afraid to say we sneaked ninja style, tresspassing all the way, in our defence we caused no harm left no trace of our visit (excepting the chamber forecourt is now less festooned with dead wood) so I feel no regret.
We parked in the only place available, on the main road near a cottage and private track, walked down the road a bit and when it was quiet jumped the low fenced wall, walked along behind the taller wall amongst the trees, then climb another fence and leg it across the field over another fence and follow the wall around the woods. after the huge mansion has come and gone from view over a low old fence through the trees to a forest track twenty yards further west is another track and from here we can see the most desperately guarded burial chamber there is. To the south is the Menai Strait east is Plas Newydd and west and north has the farms and private properties the sparse pictures on here of it are in stark contrast to all the other well known sites.
I felt it was necassary to do the sneak because Plas Newydd was still closed, though we missed it’s opening by only a week and the more difficult it is to get there, the more I want to get there. A footpath directly from the road to the chamber is what we need, free and easy.
I was amazed to see the two tall mature trees from on the chamber summit had gone, but was forlorn to find this ‘orrible fence around the chamber it was easy to get in but it does make the place feel “not as good”, inside it was much as I had left it 5 years ago, we swapped stories tidied her up a bit and said goodbye.
So, where there’s a will there’s a way
but will you go all the way.
Ilbury Camp is a pear shaped univallate fort. It is well defined on its west side by a rampart About 3 metres high.The east side of the fort has been ploughed down but you can still work out the outline of the fort.
The break in the rampart in the centre of the southern side appears to be the original entrance.
The site commands good views all around and looking from the east is a very impressive looking site. Ilbury is believed to date from the iron age.
Leave Lumphanan following the A980 to Torphins. At the first crossroads head north then turn left at the signpost indicating Balnacraig farm. The circle is in a walled and fenced area amongst trees only a few meters behind the farm. Only the recumbent, which has difficult to spot cup marks, and two half up half down circle stones remain. An internal cairn might of existed as there are stones lying everywhere. To be fair the site is ruined but at least is now being protected. Visited October 08.
My second perfect equinox sunrise in Wales at a stone row called Saith Maen, the other is further north near Rhayader.
I parked on the main road near Criag y nos park/castle thingy, and walked up the road to the footpath (its right oppostie the impressive castle like frontage of said thingy), after wandering off course a bit thrown by the farm and horse paddocks, I strode purposefully up hill. Looking up ahead, you need to head for the high ground between two gorges, it’s not easy going.
There are more stones here than at the other Saith Maen, seven in all, two large stones are down, one is leaning. One of the fallen giants has a cupmark on it, well it looks like one anyway.
What a place to watch the sunrise, the stones aren’t aligned east-west so I wasn’t looking for any alignment, I just felt like a visit and it fell on the equinox. There was just a slight mist and the rest of the Brecon Beacons between me and the sun.
A low, upright pillar, jutting from the rushes and bushes. Then, behind this growing screen, a vast recumbent slab; 2.7m long, 2m wide and 1.45m thick*.
Recorded in the Archaeological Inventory, following local tradition, as a mass rock, it may eventually provide an interesting comparison to a similarly classed and cup-marked boulder at Coorleigh South. Due to the heavy scrub on the south-eastern side of the stone, Jack Roberts’ sketch remains the only visual record of the marks or ‘circular depressions’**.
The fallen part of a NE-SW stone pair, if position and local morphology (Knockatlowig, Knockawaddra W) are taken into account.
*Archaeological Inventory of Cork, 1992; No.3271, 354.
**Roberts, J., ‘Exploring West Cork’, 1988; Ch.2, No.12, 53.
It is very thin and no, Cerrig Duon and the Maen Mawr can’t be seen but it seems obvoius that they’re going out with each other, going steady as it were, by that I mean they’re built by the same folk. But what hasn’t been mentioned is the mountain beyond, Bannau Sir Gaer is the highest peak in the Beacons at 749m, the mountain side facing the stone is a sheer cliff and fills one with awe and wonder, now stand back and look at the top of the stone and compare with mountain ridge, before thousands of years of rain wore down the stones top the two could have been identical, of course, the opposite also holds true.
I parked to the north of the fort and climbed the hill on the footpath, there so easy to find, these hillforts a nice change from camoflagued stones hiding in the undergrowth.
When visiting a burial chamber one has to get in, when visiting a stone circle one has to count and touch every stonen with a hillfort you have to walk the perimeter and identify the entrance, after thats done take photos and sit around gawping at the view, my favourite bit. I sat with back against the trig point (331m) out of the howling wind which had threatened to throw me off my step ladder earlier that morn, it wasn’t clear but it was sunny..... Yay Wales.
March 20th 2009
At last, after being stuck inside during several days of sunshine I get a chance to leave the office and escape onto the moors. Having dropped my father at the hospital on the outskirts of Plymouth I ventured a short distance onto the south west edge of Dartmoor.
Saddlesborough seemed the easiest place to access and having parked the car at the little junction where the lane from Shaugh Prior meets the road going to Cadover Bridge I walked the short distance to the cross beside the road.
Crossing the road here it is not long before you reach a tumuli, a grass covered mound of stones with one large stone sitting just off the mound.
A quick photo and then I headed uphill to where I could already make out the star topped post. Between tumuli and post I thought I might have discovered a circle of stones, all recumbent but creating at least three quarters of a circle about 18 meters across..
As Pure Joy has said before, there are so many stones, it is easy for the mind to imagine things...
The Stone Row when I reached it had recently been cleared of any long grass or gorse and so my walk along it was easily traced. Plunging downhill it ends just before the waste tip of the nearby china clay pit. There is no evidence to suggest it ever went further, but one does wonder.
From the bottom of the row I headed east to discover the hut circles and enclosures lying along the north facing slope of the hill.
