Jane

There can’t be a more impressive sight at nine o’clock in the morning as these massive erections! We stopped to admire the sheer unimaginable bulk of the single obelisk next to the road, rudely caged up behind a fence doing it’s damnest to out-tall the trees surrounding it. It must’ve been 25 feet tall – a real neolithic skyscraper. We wondered how deep the root of the stone was and settled on between six and 10 feet UNDER ground. This is one big mother! And if that is not enough, cross the lane and you see two more! The sun broke through as these two of the three magnificent menhirs of an alignment of perhaps five stones jutted out of a field of bright yellow corn, today with added interest as somebody/rutting deer/aliens/weird vortex/UFO/drunken pranksters (delete as applicable) had created a wonderful corn circle. I couldn’t make out the pattern precisely as I had no vantage point from which to gain height.

As the traffic swishes past on the A1(M), just 50 metres away, it’s great metal gantries and signs looming over the scene, you realise that the route of the A1(M) is probably as old as these stones themselves and it’s precisely why they were placed here.

Gently ruined and flattened and not half as impressive as the central circle, time has softened this henge, though you can still gain height by perching on its flattened banks in order to see it’s saucery interior. It’s big, it’s wide and open and you shouldn’t miss it.

After the jungly rainforest of the North henge, this one is a delight! Suddenly you can understand what the builders were on about! With massive earth ramparts, the hint of a ditch, and a distinct raised central platform, this has an everyone’s-welcome, inclusive market-place-type feel to it. Surely not a burial place, to me this feels like a place for the living: for singing, dancing, meeting, trading, playing and ceremony. Moth and me sat for sometime on the top of the bank at the southern end trying to make sense of it, looking to the wooded Northern henge just 500 metres or so away and down to the southern henge, it’s soft contour just rising out of the field 500 metres in a straight line to the south.

With no clear entry point to this enormous site, now thickly wooded, we parked up and clambered through a bit of broken fence on the western side where the lane skirts it. It takes an enormous amount of imagination to work this one out just because its a bit like hacking your way through some subtropical jungle. The bunnies scampered out of our way, the deer bolted, a family of tapir cantered away and I half expected to see a monumental python drop hideously from a branch...If you have a wild imagination come here! (I lied about the tapir). But despite the verdant undergrowth and dense woodland you can still make out the banks and ditches and the vast internal space. It’s very moving, actually.

This vast site consists of an area of craggy outcrops, now run by NT. As we approached from a back lane we could see pillars and tors and chimneys of rock rising impressively out of a heather and willowherb purple hillside. Magic! We parked next to a sign saying ‘No parking’, knowing we weren’t going to stay long and headed off up a track to get a closer view. If only, if only we’d had more time here – this is a HUMUNGEOUS site, certainly worthy of a whole day’s exploration. There’s a neat expensive car park further up the road from which NT will extract your money. The promise of refreshment at a kiosk lured me in, but we left caffeineless. I can’t wait to return here. But I’ll bring my own coffee.

A tortuous lane through bleak rolling moors pitted with white limestone scattered here and there lead us as close as we could drive (I’m not a walker) to this curious little stone .... circle? To call it a stone circle is stretching ths imagination, but it’s not a cairn, as suggested by the map, but a four poster, of a type more commonly viewed in Scotland. One of the uprights has cracked off and fallen inwards. You can see that it was originally built on a little mound. I had been warned that is was mightily underwhelming, but the peace and clarity of the atmosphere here, coupled with completely silent solitude and tear-jerking views makes up for it’s damaged state. This is a corker.

Weird and wild, these natural outcrops of rock are *absolutely breathtaking*, their crazy eroded shapes mushrooming up like giant mad cowpats from their cliff overlooking glorious dales scenery. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the cup marks I had read about. Anyway, go there – I challenge any one not to be mind-blown.

I spotted the stones in a field on the right just before entering the village of Trellech from the south. And WOW what an impact! I excitedly passed through the kissing gate into the field. Wading throught the wet grass, thistles and ovine faeces towards the menhirs, I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the stones and their slenderness and the mad angles which they tilted! The biggest looked for all the world like a really rather monumental cock, the angle of it making it inescapably look like a gigantic willy! Yes, I liked this place. It made me smile.

This sadly neglected long barrow/chambered tomb has the most commanding of locations on the Welsh side of Severn estuary overlooking it’s two beautiful bridges.

I parked in Leechpool (not a place where you’d want to paddle, unless you were a medieval quack, perhaps?), climbed over the stile and walked up the field to the barrow, its outline unmistakable on the skyline, with it’s two east facing portal stones jutting out above the horizon. It sits atop a little rise, giving it enough height to be described as impressive. I rather think its hillocktop location is the very fact that has saved it from destruction. The view is wonderful – two glorious modern gleaming bridges engineered to span and link this gaping physical divide between England and Wales. Sadly, not much peace here though, the traffic noise constantly swishes in the background. I wondered about the longevity of this modern engineering I was looking at compared to the the ancient engineering on which I stood. No contest. I had a bit of a scout round, and was surprised to see that the stone outline of the chamber, on top of what is left of the barrow, is still in pretty good condition (underneath the thistles and weeds) and realised that at one time the height of the barrow would have covered this lot – and some! It must’ve been a wonderful sight!