Some important information about Capocorb Vell:
There’s an entrance fee of 2 euros (2006).
There’s a bar and toilets etc.
There’s ample car parking.
It’s closed on Thursdays!
What day did we visit? Yes, you’ve guessed it, a Thursday, and our last day of holiday too so no chance to try again.
The perimeter walls were sufficient enough, together with the cacti, to discourage hopping over – a huge site with 5 talaiots and numerous rooms to explore ..... next time!
From Santanyi, we took the C714 north towards Cas Concos des Cavalier, but after only about 1km took the first right turn. This narrow road bends after maybe ½km, and glancing into the field to the left, I spotted a magnificent section of wall and following the bend round, the talaiot of Ca’n Jordi set back from the road.
This talaiot has a magnificent, if precariously balanced, central pillar and an unusual zigzag entrance runner.
There appeared to be the remains of some walls or rooms adjacant to the talaiot, but an alarmed, and equally alarming when it popped out of the undergrowth, chicken with chicks was in residence, so we didn’t investigate too closely, but went into the next field where the wall continues.
Sadly, the talaiot and the sections of wall are all that remains of the poblat Ses Talaies de ca’n Jordi.
From the southern town of Felanitx we took the PM512 towards Campos del Port but after about 1km turned off to the right onto the Cami de Son Mesquida. After about 4km, and just before Son Mesquida itself, we took a left onto Cami de Pedreres and almost immediately left again following the signpost to Can Roig.
Before long, there was a right turn with a sign saying “Formatges” which we followed, past a building with huge lettering “Santa Son Mesquida” on it. There’s a house numbered 2098 to the right, and after this we kept to the left down a farm track – with a substantially sized ostrich in the field to the left – and pulled up in the farmyard.
We asked permission, and the farmer, with a beaming grin, escorted us past the cowsheds to the naviform.
The naviform is the remaining one of three; it was the middle one, and the wall to its right contains some of the stones from its neighbour. The inside is impressive, with the walls way taller than us; the interior dividing walls are thought to be later, maybe Roman, additions, and the construction of the apse has lead archaeologists to believe there was originally an attic space.
This is a fantastic example of a Burren type wedge tomb, it also has quite easy access from the nearby road.
You cross a number of small ruinous field walls but the last of these is in fact the remainder of a ring fort according to the small booklet ‘A Burren Journey’, available locally.
To the south east of the tomb, just a few yards, is what looks like a small cairn about the same size as those found at Beaghmore, to the south west, adjoining the ruined ring walls, is a circular room or hut foundation with a hearth.
The tomb itself is quite roomy with rubble scattered on the floor, there is some kind of entrance arrangement with some large stones which once formed a facade with a possible entrance fromt he side of the court, alá West Kennet Longbarrow in its present state.
Got some beautiful flashes of glorious sunshine through the heavy clouds here today but the strong winds blew over my tripod with two flash units on, breaking both :(
A magnificent stone, hidden and neglected in the wall of a large field. The two conjoined bullauns are some of the deepest I’ve seen. Full of water and leaf mulch, I was only able to test their depth by using a stick of about a foot long. This sunk all the way ‘til it disappeared. The Arch. Inventory of Co. Carlow describes the bullauns as ‘conical’, putting one in mind of the nearby stone in Myshall graveyard.
This amazing Dolmen is from around 3300 BC and is the largest round barrow in Denmark. The circle is made up of 235 ton stones. There used to be 24 but one was cut up by a stone cutter in the 1890s. The capstone is 21 tons. The spring equinox sun shines through the entrance.
Coming from Unstan and the Brig o’Waithe, not taking the short road over to Stromness but taking the long sweep round it is easy to see this stone on the brow of the hill above the near corner of the quarry-turned-dump. Easiest to go over the gate in the roadside field before this quarry and then over the gate into the containing field. Because the rain was persisting down and the fields full of corn I opted instead to go around the quarry and through a barb-wire fence. But the thistles meant my trews were dampened anyway! At the base of the extant stone a few broken stones are from the socket I would imagine (in the quarry roadside I espied a large stone that may be part of that destroyed other). Trevor Garnham has the broad face the same direction to Unstan as the Setter Stone is to Braeside, which would have been at 45 degrees to the reported NW/SE alignment of the stone [it is at the same longtitude]. The latter appears to indicate the Dyke of Sean or maybe the Wasbister disc barrow.
In The Megalithic European, Julian pays little more than a double page spread of lip-service to the long, glorious island of Langeland off the southern coast of Fyn in Denmark, almost certainly due to lack of space in the book and time in the field.
The thing that doesn’t come over in Julian’s commentary is the sheer variety, intensity and close proximity of monument after monument in this small finger of land. It took us two days to do it justice.
The bridges to get there are mercifully toll-free and the rolling countryside on the island is more enchanting even than the rest of Denmark. Langeland is home to scores of bird species and hares and deer abound. The main town on the island is Rudkøbing which felt very strongly like a far less bleak Kirkwall.
It was Moth’s birthday and while we were waiting for our friends to join us for some lunch, we quickly zipped out to see Bjerrebygaard dolmen.
We arrived in blazing sunshine and galloped over the muddy field to reach the stunning monument, cluster of large stones, dolmens with giant capstones and six monster, gnarled ‘pantomime’ oak trees sticking out of a large mound. Very dramatic.
We spent some time enjoying it until the sky in the northwest darkened suddenly and a wall of weather closed in. We made it back to the car just in time as a full-on blizzard of hailstones pelted down.
Its pretty remote up here on the beautiful Djursland peninsula, just north west of Århus, but quite gorgeous. It’s the most beautiful part of Denmark I had yet seen. I wanted to see Poskær Stenhus – surely the most picturesque place in TME!
As we arrived the sun came out unbroken and I scampered about the monument like a happy bunny. Moth climbed the Tinghulen to get some height some photos and I, after speaking to a woman tending her horses (who, with the horse she currently tended had once lived in Lambourn) sat and found the view where the light was just right for me to paint.
Poskær Stenhus is essentially the skeleton of a monument exactly like Groenhøj – gorgeous pink kerbstones, bit of a passage, nice chamber complete with capstone, bob’s yer uncle. But the setting here is so very fabbie.
Rolling fields and hills, great views, green pasture, heathy bits – oooh! And the nicest thing it’s that somehow its all on a human scale. Nothing here is grand or majestic or mighty. It’s all rather comfortable and nice. I like that.
It should be noted that at Poskær Stenhus visitors will find excellent toilets, so for once, ladies, you don’t need to pee in the open and risk mooning as passers-by.
I even managed to make a sketch here. Happy Jane.
Groenhøj chambered tomb, near Horsens, is a perfect pincushion of a monument, not unlike the Great Cairn on Porth Hellick Down, Scilly, but bigger.
It has a continuous ring of handsome kerbstones and a good high grassy mound. Like so many of the monuments in Denmark, the stones are lovely sparkly pink and grey. It has a very narrow corridor which I probably could have wriggled through to reach the chamber but as it was wet underhoof and I was wearing my only clean pair of jeans so I didn’t bother. At its 1940 excavation, thousands of pottery sherds were unearthed here, the breaking of which was some kind of ritual associated with the use of the mound.
Today, under blue skies with big fluffy clouds and chaffinches darting around in the trees Groenhøj looked very ‘hygge’ (Danish for cosy).
We went to seek out what Dyer describes as: ‘a fine round dolmen with a central burial chamber and a ring of kerbstones’, the Baronens Høj. He should have just said: ‘it’s f*cking ace, Jane!‘
The setting, the construction, the character and the fact that the sun came out while we were there lifted my heart! What a beautiful place. It perches like a little crown 25 feet above the sea in a clearing which it shares with an old farmhouse.
It reminded me of Innisidgen on Scilly which ‘feels’ the same. Its immediate neighbour, the old farmhouse was that very distinctive shade of Danish yellow and its thatch was thickly covered in moss. When the sun came out it glowed green and bright – it felt like it was the first time I’d seen Denmark in colour. That was it. Time to get the paints out. At bloody last!
We’d spotted Nørreskov in James Dyer’s book ‘Discovering the Archaeology of Denmark’ and as we were so close thought we’d take a look even if we had already found Dyer to be slightly unreliable, banging on about finds and stuff rather than the monuments. (It’s always bloody pottery sherds and amber beads, too.)
Our first Nørreskov monument was at Frydendal Kro in the strip of woodland leading down to the sea. Here we found a rather cute little dolmen emerging out of a round barrow and right next to it, a short barrow (it wasn’t long) with a good stone cist in the top.
There were many others lurking in the woods like which went on for a few kilometres hugging the coast.
Suddenly it stopped raining and it looked as if even the sun might appear so we drove through the woods spotting birds (jays, anunidentified-but-mighty-raptor and a goldcrest!) and any suspicious humps with associated stones.
Blommeskobbel is tucked away in woodland off a muddy track – which thankfully you can drive to because it was raining again.
The trees gave some shelter but it was as damp and muddy and joyless as you could ever want. Blommeskobbel cheered me though. How could it not? The site consists of two langdysser and two round barrows, with good kerbing, nicely exposed chambers and lots of character.
I had looked forward to Blommeskobbel not just because the name sounds so cool and it means flower stones in Danish, but because when I first saw page 155 of Julian’s ‘The Megalithic European’ I knew it wouldn’t be long before I would have get to Denmark.
I would have liked to have painted here but it was too grey, too damp, too miserable. The weather was forecast to dry up later, but there was no sign of that as we headed up the coast a tiny bit from Blommeskobbel towards Nørreskov, 5 kms away.
It doesn’t look like very much until you are right up to it, because the bulk of the structure still lies below ground level, hidden under its whopping capstone. I dived straight in, to feel the space and the height and keep out of the rain. A large, ugly snail had had the same idea and lurked scarily on one of the giant uprights so I didn’t stay in for long.
It was about 6 o’clock. And I really, really, REALLY wanted to see the alignments.
We approached the alignments from the middle but Moth wanted to give me a total freak-out mind-blast by driving me along the road from one end all the way to the other to get a proper sense of scale for my first view, so I closed my eyes until we reached the very end at Menec. I could hardly wait for Moth to say: “open your eyes!”
Then came the command.
For as far into the distance that I could see were rows and rows and rows and rows of stones, stones, stones, stones! WOW. WOW. WOW.
Moth drove. Slowly. Menhirs galore snaked gracefully across the undulations of the land. And the stones kept on coming. More and more. A break in the lines for the road. Then more. A break for some trees (though there were still one or two peppering the verges). Then yet more. Some cottages. And more still. By this time we were at the Kermario alignments. A lake. And even more. After perhaps three kilometers they finally pierred-out. We turned the car around and drove all the way back to Menec to see them all again. I could’ve done that until nightfall.
We stopped at Menec hamlet which forms the western end of the main alignments to walk around the village which is neatly embraced within the horseshoe/circle of stones known here as a cromlech. it’s wonderful to see the stones snake their way through the village! Leaning on the fence barring my way into the alignments, I stared and stared, mouth agape gob-smacked by the alignments and watched as a stonechat landed on top of the nearest tallest menhir and sang his little heart out.
We drove the short way back towards Carnac passing the GARGANTUAN St Michel tumulus as we entered the village. It has a silly little chapel on top which only serves to make Christianity look very paranoid and rather pathetic. The ancient power of this tumulus dominates the landscape.
Not far from Kercadoret is tumulus Mane Lud which is well worth stopping at. It has a huge long mound, inhabited by what looked to me like redwoods. And they’re big buggers.
At the end furthest from the road is the chamber and it’s surprising! Go down a little staircase and you enter the passage and into the massive chamber. It has remarkable carvings on its wall slabs. OK, this ain’t Gavrinis, but at least you have time to study them! On the main slab at the back is a gigantic representation of a pair of ram’s horns. There are also wiggly lines, stripes, phalluses, crooks and axes, or at least I think that’s what they were. All housed underneath a MAMMOTH capstone which I paced out at 7 metres long on top.
Kercadoret dolmen. is such a ‘minor’ site here in this megalithic wonderland that it is not signposted. Julian’s instructions in TME are not exactly clear but eventually we managed to work out what the dear old hippy meant.
It’s a sweet, classic dolmen found en route down to the main drag to the Locmariaquer monuments and quite complete. If this was in the UK people would travel miles to see it. But here it feels quite forgotten.
It was time to head down to Larmor Baden village to catch the 3.30 ferry to see Gavrinis (cost in 2005: ten euros).
The ferry takes about a 15-minute chug across calm waters largely used these days for yachting and oyster beds. As we approached the southern end of the island of Gavrinis, I looked left to see the silhouette of some of the stones of the Er Lannic cromlech poking up.
With great anticipation I leapt off the boat and tore up the pathway towards to cairn. No bags, no cameras, no nothing can be taken in to the cairn and each tour is strictly guided and limited in both number and time. I sensed this was going to be frustrating.
Indeed it was. A guide, speaking only French, naturellement, began his talk. Being unable to follow French with any competency, I whizzed on ahead up to the cairn to admire its much restored façade of carefully laid stones, stepping up like a pyramid, with its little –locked – portal behind which held so much promise…
The group approached the cairn’s façade and the guide continued his talk. And continued. From what little I could follow he gave a potted history of the neolithique et âge de bronze which was probably quite good, but in my mind I was screaming: ‘shut the f**k up and let me inside, you bâtard!’.
Finally after perhaps 20 minutes he let half the group in. WOW. WOW. WOW. Swirls and spirals and waves and triangles and zigzags and lines and spots and bumps and WOW, WOW, WOW! Everywhere were the carvings; not just on one or two, but on practically ALL the wall slabs and even on the riser of the interior step into the slightly wider chamber at the end of the psychedelic passageway.
Imagine what this would have been like when it was painted- as it surely was. Everything else in antiquity was, after all. Think of all the Egyptian tombs and temples, Greco Roman statuary and so on. I could easily imagine the yellow and red ochres, ultramarine blues and umbers, chalks and charcoals swirling around in my mind.
The guide burbled on. I sat down to begin a sketch to try to study and understand some of the wild rhythms before my eyes. But, oh lâ lâ, I was asked to get out. Merde! I felt cheated and robbed. I’d only had ten minutes viewing.
On the ferry to Gavrinis, as we approached the southern end of the island of Gavrinis, I looked left to see the silhouette of some of the stones of the Er Lannic cromlech poking up.
God, I wish the guy driving the boat could have taken us round a bit closer. But one doesn’t like to ask the French for favours, does one?
On the way around the bay towards Gavrinis, we stopped to take in this monument, tumulus Kernours, near Bono.
This huge grassy mound, about the size of Duggleby Howe is built high up on a ridge among pine trees on the edge of the River d’Auray estuary. It has recently been tidied of gorsey undergrowth so much so that Moth, whohad been here before, didn’t recognise it. By now I was getting the hang of this Carnac-tumulus-visiting stuff so I grabbed the torch and entered swiftly and with the enthusiasm of a ferret in a warren. Just like Les Pierre Plats, the long, long passageway swings round, banana-style, to the left. Lots of gorgeous large flat wall slabs but no arty carvings in this one. Right next to the mound is the outline of another small cairn which reminded me hugely of the pincushion cairns up on Porth Hellick downs on the Scillies. As we grubbed around among the pines needly, gorsey paths we spotted a number of large stones. Erratics? Or something else? Who knows…
Hidden away among the homes of Locmariaquer village you’ll see the sign to Mané er Hroeuk tumulus. There’s a parking place right by it. This is a right big bugger of a mound and from what I could see rather untidy on the outside; there is no clear profile.
Steps have been constructed that lead down into the tomb. A short low passageway takes the visitor into a single large roughly round chamber. The chamber is lined with big slabs, but with no carvings that I could see. Above the wall slabs is a rough attempt at corbelling before the whole thing is topped with two giant capstones.
Moth insisted I see one in particular, knowing my mind would be blown by it. Les Pierres Plats is at the very southern tip of the Locmariaquer peninsula, now hidden away in the dunes overlooking the beach. Parking among the camper vans in the shade of the pines, a short walk of 300 metres takes you to the monument which heralds its existence in advance with a tall menhir poking above the gorse.
This amazing tomb is full of mega-surprises. Its little low portal leads into a long passageway which curves sharply round to the left. The total length must be 20 metres or so, but it never gets tall enough to stand up in. After five metres or so is a side chamber to the left. But keep going – you’ll need your torch – and you are rewarded with the most magnificent and surprising carvings on the great walling slabs. Something that looks like a fern leaf or a rib cage, another looks like a diagram of botanical cell, another looks like a phallus… Cup-marks be damned! THIS is rock art and you’ll wet your panties.
The outside of the mound is badly eroded, how much longer people should be allowed to walk around it and on it is debatable. Footfall is taking its toll.
