Frustration on Cnocan an Iolair
I’ve never been over in this part of Dublin, and yet it’s only a 15 minute drive from my house. When we eventually found the cairn and tomb I was thoroughly pissed off, having dragged Roisin and the dog through copious amounts of gorse and down many tracks unnecessarily. I misread the instructions and haven’t bought a compass yet. Oh well, you live and learn.
There’s not much to see here except the views. I’m seeing Dublin from an amazing amount of new angles. Having set out a 7 we didn’t find the site until 8.30 so the view across to Howth was not the best with city haze and low light. The little tomb is pretty sad and the farmer piling silage beside it does it no favours. The cairn is huge, but nothing much to look at, the type of place I would have noticed in the past as a slight curiosity.
I did have a look around the back of the tomb and found 3 large stones about 3 metres below it that looked to me like they had come from the tomb. All I saw here got me to wondering about whether the site has ever been excavated. Part of the cairn is collapsing with a few large indentations. One in particular seems to have been scooped out, like at Dowth, and has exposed what looks to my extremely amateurish eyes as corballing. Does this mean a roof and passage? Answers on a postcard to TMA forum please.
There are some very large stones down the back of the tomb, maybe once part of the structure
Looking down the passage with the cairn in the background
Roisin does a wickerman on the top of the cairn