Jane

“Where now, Spaceship Mark?” I asked. The last monument of the day was to be what I wrote down as Dolmen de Kermané (I wrote down ‘Kerangoff’ for some reason I now can’t remember?) At the end of a lane in a tiny little hamlet this is yet another of those corking local dolmens that is overlooked by visitors to the area in favour of the larger “Hollywood” monuments. If this was in the UK people would drive miles to see it. This one’s capstone had to be supported by an iron girder, but hey, at least it meant someone cared!

I loved it here and made a really quick sketch while Moth set up the tripod.

We took to the sanctuary of the tiny Nine stones stone circle, sheltered beneath the branches of a spectacular mature beech tree, with massive fungus colonies sprouting from its roots. It’s a very sweet stone circle which was perhaps used by both local people and travellers using the trackway that is now the busy A35.

Some tosser or tossers has chosen to decorate the monument with flowers. One bunch, still wrapped in its sellophane, had been left at the base of the tree. Another bunch had been placed in a log vase in the centre of the circle, around which was arranged some twigs to form the arms of a reversed swastika. Perhaps the same tosser who did this scratched the graffiti at the Hellstone?

Two things: 1. How come the people who apparently have enough ‘respect’ to lay flowers as some kind of offering at an ancient monument, can’t be arsed to respect the 1. environment by taking their sellophane wrappings aways with them? and 2. the feelings of other visitors for who the swastika means nazism and is therefore deeply offensive? You can be sure that the swastika twigs did not stay very long! Moth unwrapped the flowers and took away the sellophane to dispose of correctly.

I do love a dolmen. The Hellstone is one I’d wanted to see for some time as in the photos I’d seem it looked so tortured and in a very unusual position. When I actually saw it yesterday it all made sense at last. On a field boundary, near a gate and a pond, this dolmen has been horribly mucked about with during an ill-considered restoration. Stones huddle together like fingers in a clenched fist supporting a single lumpy capstone. It’s all wrong! But it’s all right, too, because at least it’s up. It’s up and someone actually gives a toss. The monument still has power.

Like all ancient monuments with chambers I have to get inside. This one is tall enough for me to stand up in with loads of headroom. Some tosser had scrawled graffiti on one of the stones inside the chamber- a reversed swastika. A pox on them.

As Moth whizzed around taking photos, I made a very quick sketch before my hands got too cold to continue. The more I drew the more it reminded me a lot of Crucuno dolmen in Brittany.

Our first stop was The Grey Mare & Her Colts – the remains of a once-mighty Neolithic long barrow. Sheep were basking like lizards in the winter sun as we arrived. They hardly even budged as we climbed over the gate and over them to get into the field. The Grey Mare & Her Colts is a bit of a wreck but I have seen enough trashed burial chambers to be able to ‘read’ what is left of the stones. The swelling of the barrow is very pronounced and the portal stones are very large indeed. Up here the views stretch for miles and sounds of the countryside quietly seep into your soul...

Just two fields away from The Grey Mare lies Kingston Russell stone circle. The world’s leading authority on stone circles, Aubrey Burl, didn’t put this circle in his definitive field guide to British stone circles which has caused much puzzlement in the amateur antiquarian community over the years. I wanted to see the stones for myself, especially as Moth said he liked it so much.

Sadly not one of the stones stand any more, but there are lots of stones to see, perhaps 18 of them, some really quite big lying on the ground next to the place where they once stood. The circle’s diameter is about 15ms (I’m quite bad at guessing these things). This would have been a real beauty. And actually, it still is. The internal space is still clearly marked out and although the drama and life was destroyed by whoever pulled the stones down, the circle is not yet dead. I liked it a lot. The farmer had just been and mowed carefully round the circle and the place smelled fabulous.

Re-erect them stones!

Approaching the tomb, past the cricket pitch we disturbed perhaps 25 pheasants – cannon fodder for the local shooting club. And then you see it! What a fabulous tomb, but once again sadly screwed by thoughtless restoration. Jesus-H-Christ-on-bike, what do they think they’re doing lobbing in some ugly timber pitprops to hold up the capstone? Indeed, does it really need holding up? I think not. Surely a clean single metal bar lurking behind the portal stone would have done the trick. Instead we get enough timber to build a new cricket pavilion. Great stones. Great spaces. Lovely looking thing. Great atmosphere. Crap rafters.

Hadn’t seen anything like this before: three gorgeous pointy stones, arranged quite close together in an triangular ground plan. They looked like three characters just hanging out having a conversation. It was almost impossible for me and my sprogs not to get in among them and lurk around them, moving from stone to stone. This pissed the hell out of the two photographers in our party.One stone looks extremely phallic. This cannot just be my smutty mind as it is very cock-like indeed. Don’t bring your god-fearing maiden-aunt here! Some beautiful views over towards the elegant wind turbines from here. So much nicer than the hideous aluminum smelting plant on Holy Island.

Jane’s Law of Dolmen Visiting states: “Thou shalt make every effort to enter the chamber and grub about in it”. Lligwy is especially good for this although at first glance you wonder how the hell you’re going to get in. The entrance is small and requires a hands and knees approach. But once beneath the gigantic capstone weighing 25 tons it feels light and spacious as if it’s hovering above. It’s not. It’s held aloft by lots of uprights and once you’re in, the ground sinks down below you. There’s even a comfy megalithic bunk to lie down on to avoid the mud. We loved it despite being caged in by yet another set of ugly, pointy railings.

On a wild hillside covered in gorse, brambles and blackthorn lurks this beauty. Like Mulfra Quoit in Cornwall, the capstone has fallen back dramatically. It’s constructed of the same puddingy type local stone as Lligwy, which isn’t very beautiful, but it is very white and looks good. It was fairly tight in there, but Rupert and I had to squeeze in. That’s the law with dolmens, isn’t it?

Argh! Another example of hideous restoration! Whichever pricks decided to use pillars of bricks to hold up capstones need their brains concreted. I suppose I should be thankful that the capstone is still up but this beautiful chamber has been very badly damaged by it’s repairs. You can get a view of it where the brick pillars are not visible and that is certainly worth enjoying.

This pair of weird whoppers stand strangely straddling a rusty gate. They are enormous! One’s quite flat and perhaps 18 feet tall and the other is dumpy, but make no mistake, they’re Big Mothers! The notes say they may be what remains of a stone circle, but I’m not sure I buy this theory. These are just too goddamned gigantic for that and too close together for the proportions to make sense. A burial chamber perhaps, but not a circle surely. Check ‘em out for yourself. They’re ace!

I’m a sucker for a neat little dolmen, so I was always going to love Bodowyr, for it is as pretty as something as sweet and fluffy in Faeryland. It’s caged in behind a nasty fence you can easily climb over. I suspect the railings are to protect the dolmen from the resident herd of cattle in the field. The herd including large mean-looking bull were completely disinterested in us. For those who are a cattle-shy, you could always leg it the 50 metres across the field and retreat behind the fence surrounding the dolmen if they approached.

Today we also had the protection of a 12-year-old son equipped with very loud cap gun.

A stunning grassy mound within a small henge, in all but proportion, just like the green sombrero of Maeshowe. Even my kids fell for its charms, not least because you can get inside and grub around. There’s an intriguing standing stone inside the chamber, which must have been built around it. There are also two really nasty, ugly concrete lintels shoved in during restoration, which made me a bit cross. The ditch of the henge is, unusually, lined with large stones.

A fiver deposit got us the key from the Wayside stores in Llanfaelog, just one mile north from the chamber. And then with a stiff westerly blowing, we walked up the headland from our cottage to Barclodiad-y-Gawres. Right on a headland sticking out between two gorgeous beaches this chamber has much to recommend it.

I zipped inside quickly not least because it offered blessed relief from the wind. A couple of stones have swirls and zigzags carved onto the rocks reminding me a little of Gavrinis. I even liked the concrete dome protecting the internal chamber from the weather and allowing vistiors to view the entire construction. However, this was the only instance of Welsh restoration that I liked. But more on that story later.

If you get the chance, walk round on the cliffs to the south of Barclodiad and Cable Bay. The views of Barclodiad are wonderful and while you’re here look out for the merlins, wagtails, oystercatchers and whinchats!

I’ve seen a few hut circles in my time, but these are the most perfect I have yet seen. They may only be a series of small walls, but what small walls! Today up to 20 of them nestle among tall bracken and heather strung along the hillside which is bright purple. All beautifully restored, it’s not hard to imagine them with their conical wood and thatch roofs and all the activity of domestic life... smell that roasting pork and those frying guillemot eggs!

Park in the RSPB South Stack car park. And while you’re here why not teeter along those cliff tops? We saw gannets and choughs!

Blimey Batman! We liked these! Tall, elegant and graceful, this pair of megalithic goalposts stand long after the game is forgotten. Having only just returned from Aberdeendshire, I couldn’t help thinking how much like flankers these were, without the recumbent. It’s hard to be here and not try to bridge the gap between the stones. What went on in the sacred space?

Just across the new, fast main road from the aluminium smelting plant is this nicely restored chambered cairn. Lots to see here: from a distance and due to the slatey material it’s made of, it reminded me very strongly of a French allee couverte. I liked the juxtaposition of the industrial plant so close and the new road. Despite the continual urban and industrial growth, this thing survives – and rather well.

While you’re here, look out for Ty Mawr just up the lane. It’s a biggun!

We hadn’t seen many of the Dunideer sites as mostly they’re pretty knocked about, but I had to see Stonehead, rearing up next to Dunideer hill. I wasn’t disappointed. This is a monster with a looming voice. The stones and the hill seem to be engaged in a quiet, whispered conversation.

You can drive all the way down the track to it, so is really good for those less able (or too goddamn lazy like me) to walk. The sun was shining and hot again, the bees buzzed in the thistles, a woodpecker joined us and we sat and marvelled at this perfect little circle, lovingly restored on its perfect flying saucer mound to welcome visitors. I sat and sketched. A perfect end to the day!

Foiled again, Moth! Moth has been trying to get here for years but has been consistently beaten back by cattle. Today, within sniffing distance there it was – this time we were held back by barley. There was no way we dared wade through that verdant crop against the tramlines. Very disappointed.

You can never predict how a site will make you feel. Memsie cairn is really quite simple to describe – a pile of stones. It has no entrance, no chamber to crawl into, no redeeming features other than it’s a huge pile of grey stones. But I loved it! Simple pleasures, eh.

As we parked it started to rain a few drops. But I was looking forward to this. The approach to it is marvellous, too. The overgrown track takes you up a hill, through a deep dark pine wood which softened the rain to mist and muffled our footfalls on the carpet of needles, then throws you out in the circle!

Wow! Wow! Damn the rain for coming now, for I would have liked to paint here, but at least I’ve seen it. The best bit is that thrillingly, the recumbent is a giant penis!

The rain was falling steadily. Dampened spirits? Not a chance. Cock on!

We asked at the farm, rather than at the cottage with nasty plastic swans in the garden. A friendly young man of dangerously fat proportions who was tinkering with a tractor in the yard told us it was OK to go in and have a look. He seemed quite pleased to have a visitor.

The circle is pretty trashed and looked shabby because for some reason it has recently been fenced off, so it hadn’t been grazed and was full of nasty weeds.

Moth really loved this, but I was really quite indifferent.

A whopping single standing stone in a tiny churchyard is all that is left of what was perhaps once a stone circle. This is one of those crazy stones that you don’t realise how tall it is until you stand right next to it and it towers above you!

The lane takes you right up to Thorax Farm and we could see from the map that the stone circle lies was just on the other side. We rang the farmhouse bell to ask permission, but there was no reply, so we parked sensibly and left a note in the window saying we had come to see the stone circle and set off through the farmyard complete with peacocks, llamas and horses.

As we walked up to the circle we could see people already in it, one of who was the farmer, a woman called Sandra.

The circle itself is lovely with a very small diameter and six good sized stones standing in a bank of rubbly cairn material. One stone is heavily cupped marked to the east.

She told us she was very proud of having her own stone circle and had taken the advice of Historic Scotland’s inspector and had got help to clear out the rubble dumped there over the years to reveal the original cairn platform.

Sandra’s attitude to her ownership of her stone circle was in complete contrast to the farmer we had met less than an hour before at Rothiemay.

She has a holiday let, called Antiquity Cottage which looked like a delightful retreat: The standing stone in front of the cottage is not prehistoric. It makes the resting place of her favourite old horse, Jim.

I was really looking forward to seeing this one as the sheer blocky bulk of the heavily cupmarked recumbent really appealed to me in papery TMA. But I didn’t dare enter the field though as there was a herd of cattle present complete with bull. Moth dared, but he runs faster than me. So I sat on the non-prehistoric stone gatepost to observe. Its flankers are gone but there are still four beautiful evenly placed stones of the circle still standing.

As I sat observing, the farmer drove up and stopped. “Just looking at your stone circle” I said. “That’s fine” he said, “but I don’t think anyone really owns a stone circle, do they. It’s just on my land.”

Just a little up the road from Loanhead of Daviot New Craig stone circle is just a recumbent and flankers. We couldn’t get to it as the field in front was inhabited by cattle with bulls. However, even from the road you could see just how huge the recumbent is and how these stones dominate the landscape.

In the care of historic Scotland this well-tended site was too well restored for my taste, but it was hot nevertheless. I loved the cremation site immediately next to the stone circle and one of the flankers looked like a gigantic penis.

Despite the tedious 20 minute walk up a stoney track to the site, it was worth the effort. What a name, what a place! It helped that as you walk you could see where you were going, as the stones stick up high out of the hilltop. And then you get there. There’s so much to see – both the site itself with lovely stones, a bit of cairn material, some woodland and fab views down to the airport. We spent ages quite alone here and I felt so relaxed that I lay down and went to sleep in the protective hollow in front of the recumbent. Delicious!

Very close to Auchquhorthies & Auld Bourtreebush this enjoys the same sightlines and atmosphere. It has four nice stones on a raised platform but there does seem to be something suspiciously wrong about it. Nevertheless, I liked it and access to it is so easy, it’s worth a look-see.

This pair of large stone circles (Auchquhorthies & Auld Bourtreebush) are clearly connected as they are little more than 200ms apart, but are definitely separate sites.

They’re both rather a jumble of stones, but there is lots to see and enough large tall stones still standing to help the viewer reconstruct the scale and importance of these sites.

Didn’t really enjoy it here, though. It may have been that there was a bull in the field.

Nice sea views!

It’s quite trashed. Half the circle is gone but the six stone left are enough to enjoy in the cool forest glade. The recumbent is quite small and one of the flankers is down. Why-oh-why not erect it again? Liked this one a lot!

This place is also known as Mulloch or Garrol Wood stone circle.

Hideously restored and completely lacking in any atmosphere it felt like a bad example of overly ambitious garden landscaping done by a cowboy builder.

But at least it’s still here.

I was more interested in the line of parkland trees leading to the site and the many nesting boxes secured high up each one.

Anywhere else but Aberdeenshire, I would have gone for a poke around the henge and the stones in this undoubtedly important site. But after a busy and long day looking at nearby stuff like Sunhoney and East Aquhorthies I couldn’t even be arsed to get out of the car. So we parked behind the garage and sat and looked at the monument as we munched our chips for tea. This is clearly worth more than the miserable effort I took.

Today deep in thigh-high grass and purple foxgloves spikes, Sunhoney is sublime coolness.

The grass was so deep that we could hardly see the recumbent at all, and the atmosphere here so soporific and drowsy that Moth and I both forgot to seek out the cupmarks. The lovely deep red stones, the warm breeze in the trees, the hum of the insects and the luscious blanket of waving grasses all conspired to create a megalithic lullaby.

So low is the recumbent and so relatively tall the flankers that the arrangement looks more like a showjump to pop over on your pony than a megalithic altar.

It’s on private land, but is a very good example of a farmer accepting his responsibility to let the public view it. There is a place to park and a sign pointing the way along which he has erected gates and a fence to protect his crops.

I’m in love with Sunhoney.

It always makes me smile to see an ancient monument survive in context like this: a churchyard. Ha! Neatly tended lawns and regimented lines of graves and in the middle of it all… a stone circle! What pleasure! The flankers look as if they are triumphal raised arms as if the christians never existed.

Some of the modern graves are a bit too close to the circle for my liking, but it is easy to block them out of your mind and concentrate on those big pink stones.

This one is strawberries and cream!

Gah! We followed greywether’s directions precisely, but after stomping around in the forest for quite some time and losing gallons of sweat we failed to find it. Grrrrr! Very much more specific directions please!

This wasn’t on our itinerary, but we were driving past and couldn’t resist a peep. This was a ‘bonus track’. The map showed a potentially tedious walk which could be a hot, hideous waste of 20 precious minutes. You shouldn’t really go ‘off roading’ in a Mazda 626 but I like a challenge. So at the point where most sensible people would park and walk, I drove on. Success!

Tucked away among oak woodland in the grounds of a hotel/conference centre thing stand five lovely good sized stones set close together in a fairy-ring stylee. From their relative positions, it seemed to me that either two stones were missing or it was a four-poster with an extra one slotted in for a reason I couldn’t conceive.

Completely charming!

High up on a raise and viciously quarried right up the edge, this lovely place seems to teeter like a potential suicide at Beachy Head.

It has been recently restored and now boasts roadsigns, a car park, some picnic tables and a well constructed, unobstrusive path suitable for wheelchairs. Historic Scotland wants this one on the map! And why not? I just wish they’d do more like this and show that people really do care for our ancient monuments instead of them being an embarrassment, like Old Keig. The views are spectacular from the little platform and the sky seems very big.

This is too easy to miss, right on a corner, and with such a tiny entrance that even the sign pointing clearly to the entrance makes you think ‘where’? But it’s huge!

After an initial squeeze down into the banana shaped souterrain, the head height is more generous and I was able to stand up. Treading carefully, as my torch didn’t seem to penetrate the gloom whatsoever, I paced it out at 16 paces and counted seven capstones! Wow!

After the relentless Aberdeenshire sun (and you don’t get to write that very often) the fridge coolness of the earth house was most welcome. This was surely a prehistoric food store-cum-bank-cum-insurance policy.

To reach Old Keig you first have to climb over a nasty barbed wire fence (be careful! I cut my leg!) and trespass down through a narrow strip of copse. The farmer clearly doesn’t want visitors. The stones are set onto a spur of land in a rolling wide valley – a fantastic location. All that is left of the circle stones at Old Keig is a jumble of large broken stones which have been moved and dragged about and hidden in undergrowth. But the recumbent and flankers are just too massive to move or hide. With some effort I clambered onto the gigantic recumbent and paced it out – 6 paces long! It’s also noticeable flat and straight along the top.

The feeling of trespass didn’t leave me, however, especially as we were being watched only metres away by an equally gigantic snorting red bull with testicles the size of footballs and a Mike Tyson look his eye, held back only by a line of barbed wire.

Set in an Arcadian woodland glade, this is a monstrous site! The flankers are incredibly tall and pointy in opposing ways but made to seem small by the huge bulk of the recumbent stone, which is round and streamlined like a whale. With insects whirring and the smell of hot pine and warm forest this was a Loved it!

The woodland is now being used a natural burial ground, with plots for cremations in the wood (though not within a certain distance of the stones) and plots for whole body burials at the edge of the wood. I can’t think of a more appropriate resting place.

Properly called Easter Aquhorthies, this was my first recumbent stone circle – and the one I had been most looking forward to seeing. Beautifully restored and presented and with stones sparkling in the light out of the greenest of landscapes, we spent three delightful hours here during which I got quite sunburned.

People came and went. Local dog walkers, casual visitors, a party of children, mountain bikers, joggers (one woman swore blind she has just seen a lynx or other large cat in the next field) and a friendly mature couple who knew about stones. We got chatting to them about Aubrey Burl and Julian Cope. The gentleman, who must have been well into his 70s who had met Cope at some talk or other commented on Cope’s academic prowess despite his unusual and unique appearance!

Ah, but the stones! What a temple to the heavens! I was enchanted and reached for my paints. I started with a quick sketch, but moved on to a more considered and lengthy study.

Up on Rhossili Down there are cairns, burnt mounds and Sweyne howes chambered tombs. The fact it faces west must be of significance.

It’s a hard slog up, though!

A short walk through the woods following the line of the river Usk brings you to the Fish stone... in theory! Actually the path through woods is 30 feet up a steep slope and the stone stands in the grassy inaccessible valley below. Being a confident walker, Moth decided to head off down the slope and seek it out, trespassing merrily. I didn’t! I could see the stone tantalisingly close below, but there was no way I was going to be able to reach it. It’s crackingly tall – perhaps 18 feet or more and intriguingly fish shaped, with distinct fins projecting from its narrowest sides.

It is scarily close to the road! It now signals the entrance to a posh hotel. The stones, all about 2 feet tall and 2 feet across, clearly mark out a main chamber and entrance passageway, but the rest of the tomb is long gone. No mound, no rubble, no nothing. The only thing to indicate the tomb’s original size and scale is a number of marker stones. Once, it might have been as big and impressive as Belas Knap or Stoney Littleton. My guess is that much of the cairn material was used to build and repair the road.

Out on the other side of Crickhowell on the edge of a village recreation ground is Carn Coch burial chamber. There’s not much left to see here, but I liked it. A grassy mound with a bit of rubble poking through here and there and a single flat capstone is all that remains. It’s been disturbed a bit too, as its outline is not smooth or distinct.

It has as tremendous view of the very unusually shaped Sugar Loaf hill on the other side of the valley.

In the village of Llangenny, very close to Crickhowell two standing stones are marked on the map. One stands very small and looking rather forlorn and alone at the bottom of the valley. It’s nice though, and I’d like it in my orchard!

Llangenny is a small picturesque village, tumbling down a steep hillside so we drove through in an attempt to find the second stone on the map at SO237188. In thick impenetrable woodland, overgrown with brambles and dry bracken we didn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of finding it, so we moved on.

The growing stone is a very tall, slender menhir, standing sentinel by the roadside about 12 feet high and provides a certain surprising quirkiness at the entrance of a military training establishment. It didn’t need medals or stripes or pips to give it authority.

In February 2004 I posted this news item. I’ve been keen to visit this site ever since. I have no idea what Brian Perinton and Claire Williams felt when they visited Carn Llechart, but I didn’t feel anything except relief to have found the monument and cold because the breeze was arctic! The monument itself is completely alluring and very beautiful. A ring of stones – once the outer walls of a cairn, not a stone circle – stand exposed now without any internal material to support. In the middle is a lovely stone deep stone cist with big flat slabs.

Today in weak midwinter sunlight and with frost picking the flakiness of the stones it looked gorgeous.

Did I mention the views from up here? Wow!! Thankfully you can drive almost to the very top of this hill, leaving just a short walk of 500ms or so.