Jane

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.