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Glencullen, Onagh and Kiltiernan

My first Saturday off in a month so what better to do than a round of par 3 followed by a visit to some new sites? Handy that the par 3 course (I'm a bit freaked to say golf as I reckon that's a four-letter-word around here) has the quartz standing stone that I visited with Roisin last week. Besdies, the views of the Sugarloaf and the Dargle Valley are stunning from here, especially from the 8th tee (jeez, enough with the golf already).

So on to Onagh portal tomb. It looks like the runied cottage may not be there for too much longer. There's a drive of hardcore just been laid on the entrance to the field that contains the tomb and there's a lot of building work going on in the vicinity (so what's new? This is Ireland after all). The tomb itself is quite overgrown now in late May. The slipped capstone has that lovely weathered sheen, contrasting with the roughness of the worked underside. I couldn't really make too much out of the other stones, save for the reddish backstone of the chamber. The Sugarloaf is a dominating presence here, though the views across the Glencree valley to Maulin and Tonduff North and South are to die for. Hopefully I'm wrong about the building work, though I suspect I'm not.

After a quick detour to show my mate the Glencree River (he's big into fishing) we headed for Kiltiernan portal tomb. We parked at the end of the farm track and headed up to the dolmen. There is now an electric fence around the field with the dolmen and this was off-putting at first, so much so that we passed on 30 metres more than we needed to. This was maybe a fortuitous mistake as we discovered a pile of rocks, more of which later. Backtracking, and rolling under the said fence the dolmen appeared slowly out of the gorse.

What a spot! I love the proud snout of the capstone. This is a statement of vigour if ever there was one. Once again, as with its sister Glendruid, how the hell did they get that up there? The gorse around the tomb is annoying, if only because it impedes the taking of some good photos. I had to climb this beast's back.

As is often the case there were many stones scattered about the place. I had an urge to go back to the pile of stones that I had seen earlier. They looked like they had been dumped there in a field clearance but their shapes said megalithic. There were some strange markings on one of them and this drew me up to investigate, almost breaking my neck on a shaky bugger. On closer inspection the shapes appeared natural and then, once again, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a lozenge type marking. It was 'carved' on two faces of the stone and had a definite centre. The indentations were old but the doubter in me said "you'reonly seeing it coz you want to see it." Ill post them anyway and see if anybody has any thoughts.

Onagh — Images

28.05.06ce
<b>Onagh</b>Posted by ryaner

Kiltiernan — Images

28.05.06ce
<b>Kiltiernan</b>Posted by ryaner<b>Kiltiernan</b>Posted by ryaner<b>Kiltiernan</b>Posted by ryaner<b>Kiltiernan</b>Posted by ryaner<b>Kiltiernan</b>Posted by ryaner
ryaner Posted by ryaner
28th May 2006ce


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