Visited 28.11.10
When I first visited this site a couple of years ago I was quite new to 'old stoning' and didn't feel comfortable walking uninvited into someone's field. However, those days are long gone and I now happily walked through the (already open) field gate, across the bone hard frozen mud and the 100 yards or so to the stone. With temperatures down to minus 10 overnight it was a bitterly cold day but beautiful nonetheless. Dark blue skies with white frost covered grass and all the puddles frozen over.
The stone itself is about 6ft high and was covered in pretty yellow lichen. As I felt how cold the stone was I became aware of the strange situation I found myself in. Behind me the sun was shining brightly, to my left a half moon still clearly visible against the dark blue sky and to my right two aeroplanes high in the sky, glistening in the sunlight. It made me ponder how much things had changed over the last few thousand years and yet this stone remains. I wonder what other changes this stone will witness over the years to come?
Well worth a visit but access would be very muddy in warmer weather!
A quick visit on 24 July 2010, on my way home from Herefordshire. Train from Newport drops me at Seven Tunnel Junction and it's a fairly quick stroll, albeit along a busy road (the B4245) for much of the way. Once through the little hamlet of Llanfihangel Rogiet ("The Church of [St] Michael at Rogiet"), the road goes under the M4, newly arrived from England and the stone is in the first field on the right.
Its location is now horrible, due to the motorway. I know not everyone believes that landscape context means anything, but in a place like this it has been truly destroyed. There are no views at all to the east, blotted out by the motorway. At least a screen of trees and shrubs reduces the visual intrusion slightly but there's still the noise. To the south the B-road is pretty busy and hedges cut off any line of sight down to the Severn, across which the Devil threw the stone in a fit of anger.
The stone itself is rather fine though, a triangular, lichen covered slab of limestone. Worth a visit, but don't expect atmosphere unless you're reading this in a few hundred years' time when the motorway has been turned into a river of orchids and the cars have been pushed from the road.
Just to point out that the stone is in the field on the right, just after going under the motorway road bridge when travelling from Rogiet to Undy on the B4245. Parking bit tricky on side of road.
(I spent quite a while driving up and down to find the right field!)
Just as you go under the motorway, on the B4245 to Magor, on the right is a field gate. From here you can see the stone about 150mtrs along the fence. The stone is thin and triangular about 6ft high. This is another strange place where sounds are not intrusive even though the motorway is so near. Make it your next call after Heston Brake.
From "Mysterious Wales" - Chris Barber (Paladin 1983):
This stone, 7 feet high and 5 feet broad, stands in the middle of a field to the west of Llanfihangel Rogiet church. One historian suggests that it was placed in the field to mark the height to which the water rose on the occasion of the Severn flood in 1606. The legendary origin is much more interesting. It was hurled from Portishead, or some other spot on the far side of the Bristol Channel, by the Devil in a fit of temper!
Sadly Barber doesn't give any source for this legend.
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