Jane

...a single menhir about 6 or 7 feet high with her square footprint in a pool of boggy water with marsh grass growing jauntily up against it. Charlie Dimmock couldn’t have produced a more picturesque water-feature. Indeed, so stately and serene was this menhir, in her own little pool, we felt she looked like the lady of the lake.

What kind of strangeness is THIS?!

Five cist-like chambers arranged like the spokes of a wheel, in varying states of disrepair, some with capstones, dolmen-like, some with only three sides of their chambers remaining, overlooking Dinas Head. A real mish-mash is all that is left. But what a mish-mash!

A decidedly weird place and like NOTHING I have ever encountered before. At its widest point it must’ve measured 30 or 40 metres across. It lies only 10 metres away from the main A487 Fishguard to Cardigan road and can be clearly seen through a small gate in the hedge.

I tried to make sense of it… was it one almighty barrow-like structure at one time? It showed no hint of hump or raising as many still do. Treaclechops noticed there was a standing stone in the same field, but as we were already trespassing, and the field was very wet and full of bullocks, we didn’t venture too far further.

A large standing stone, about 8 feet high, on private land, but only 15 ms from the road. On a steep hillside, this menhir is in a very dramatic position being overlooked by Mynedd Carningli. Very stately.

The fallen Maen-y-Parc stones are bit hard to find… One stone is only a 50 or 60 metres away from Maen-y-Parc ‘A’ so hidden as to be imperceptible. Now firmly integrated into the hedge/field/lane boundary and hidden under a hawthorn bush, my son Rupert noticed the top of it just peeping up.

Suddenly it became easy to see how a 6 foot tall menhir could become ‘lost’.

There is no public access to Maen-y-Parc ‘A’, but you can see it at the edge of the field, rising sharply up towards a bit of a forested hill. Despite the lack of access, I vaulted over the gate and started trotting towards it around the field boundary in order to get a photo. The stone itself is very lonely but quite grand at about 7 or 8 feet high. Like many round here, it has a square footprint.

According to the map at Tafarn y Bwylch a number of standing stones can be found.

Parking by the cattle grid, we trudged up the bleak looking path, and first came across a pair on the left hand side of the track leaning violently over as if bracing themselves against the wind. The light was low and the mizzle and murk prevented me from sketching but treaclechops liked the moodiness of it and, naturally, got out her camera. The stones stood stoicly together about 4 feet high, and the place felt very bleak.

We pressed on towards an altogether grander affair, the Waun Mawn stone part of the same complex only about 100 bone chilling metres up the hillside on the right hand side of the track…We noticed on our map that there were a number of other standing stones, again part of this Tafarn y Bwylch group, just about 200ms away to the east, but by this time we were so cold, that we couldn’t be arsed.

Late May, and after wading through a sea of bluebells, there it was. Talk about mindblown!! It is truly remarkable. Even my hard-to-please son liked it. My daughter adored it.

The capstone appears to hover over only three of its uprights, looking for all the world like some gigantic aerodynamic cuttlefish with Mynydd Carningli lurking just beyond and away in the distance, the Nevern estuary and Newport Sands. PHWOAAR! I sat and made four quick sketches from various angles just to try to make sense of this magnificent beast and capture the deepening shadows that moved around the uprights.

During the week I had in Newport, I returned here five times.

This is curiously wonderful and though I had seen it before in 1998, I couldn’t wait to see it again.

It has its own little neatly-tended lawn tucked away in its own plot between some very white, middle class holiday chalets. And yet, as soon as you see it, you realise you have entered fairyland, and the encroaching chalets cease to matter.

Enchanting, bewitching and tear-jerkingly cute, this little dolmen stands like a magic mushroom close to the Nevern river estuary, (from perhaps where the bluestones of Stonehenge were once floated down?) and points at the sacred mountain Mynydd Carningli.

I sat and looked and made a rather crappy sketch of it.

Go there. You’ll love it.

What a fine chap Kammer is! About 2kms from Parc-y-Meirw, at a crossroads on the edge of nowhere, just under the rocky outcrop of a high mountain, his car screeched to halt in front of us and he ran out to tell me: “There’s a cairn over there!” Well, I couldn’t see it, but we got out to look anyway.

Indeed, I didn’t see it until he was standing in it. It turned out to be this -Glyn Gath- a small ring cairn, about six to eight metres wide, camoflagued by lowgrowing gorse and heathers, with a ring-effect up to 3 feet tall in places. Not especially worth going out of your way for, (unless you’re really into ruinous ring cairns), but nevertheless certainly worth a shufti if you’re in the immediate vicinity.

Well-spotted Kammer!

This lovely stone row is cunningly disguised as a hedge or field boundary, and in May is replendant with gorse, bluebells, red campion, kek, young green bracken fronds, foxgloves, white campion and buttercups. Really exceptionally pretty.

Visited here with my sprogs and the lovely Kammer and his family.

Scrambling up the steep rocky hedgerow at the top of the field you could clearly see the the stone row pointed at the promentary at Fishguard off in the distance about 5kms away, where a ferry to Ireland was moored up. My son and I walked down the length of the row and counted 4 standing stones, one used as a gatepost and 3, perhaps 4 fallen ones in the verdant undergrowth. But what a view! You could even see over to St Davids, way out to the west. The stone row seems to follow an ancient track, the lane is very sunken, implying great age.

Go to the viewpoint at SN010384 up the hill from Dinas Cross and you’ll see this standing about 9 feet high in a field behind some cottages on the main road. The view from up here is utterly wonderful. I sat on a bench dedicated to the memory of ‘Big’ Glyn Somebody-or-other. The inscription read: ‘If you knew him you were lucky.’ I didn’t know him, but I knew I liked this view, as must he have done. I felt lucky.

All hail to this mighty burial chamber! All wind and all rain, too. To reach the beast, I galloped the quarter of a mile through the tall wet grass in the field in inadequate clothing clutching an all-too-small umbrella to protect me from the horizontal, angry hailstorm.

But I wanted to inspect the GIANT weetabix capstone, the beautiful construction of the stones supporting it, the whopping chamber beneath it. The appalling weather made it feel very intimate, not only because I had it entirely to myself, but also because from beneath my umbrella my field of vision was severely impaired, so the massive pylon looming over it so closely was completely irrelevant to me. The rivulets of water streaming off the stones made them glisten with life and despite the dull lighting conditions, the photos I took showed the stones off as shiny and wonderful.

I marvelled at Tinkinswood’s great size and shape, it reminded me of Belas Knap, but without the swelling of Belas’ reconstructed mound. Tinkinswood is more collapsed and flatter. Was it always thus?

Despite my cold, saturated trousers I felt happy and inspired by this place. Carole, waiting for me in the car, could hardly believe that after having spent 15 mins out in the storm I could return to the car smiling. That’s the power of Tinkinswood.

Ooooh! So cute! and standing just 20 metres or so from the kissing gate at the edge of the field its beautiful silhouette on the horizon. I ran up the field excitedly towards this little house of cards but made in stone, its simplicity of construction and symmetry a sheer delight. It provided perfect cover from the appalling weather for a moment until curiosity forced me out from the dolmen’s cover in order that I investigate the context of the field in which it stands. The weird low western light, the stairrods-rain and the shimmer of long wet grass revealed the original shape and size of the long barrow of which this dolmen would have once been a part.

Love it! I’d love to return here on a sunshiney day with a flask of Earl Grey and a selection of interesting cheeses. A little Jarlsberg anyone?

I happened on this accidentally a week ago. I was driving on the A34/Newbury bypass and completely missed my turn and ended up at Whitchurch, stumbling across this enroute. The prominence and height of this beastie and it’s proximity to the road is outstanding.

Stretching for 85 miles from Ivinghoe Beacon in the north east to Overton Hill in the south west, the Ridgeway’s midsection cuts a dashing white swathe through my patch: Oxfordshire. A particularly fine short section from the Uffington White Horse to Waylands Smithy allows the walker/cyclist/rider to experience the drama of Uffington Castle enroute to the great long barrow just a mile and a half away to the south west. The views over the big wide fields and patches of woodland of Uffington Down are breathtaking. Park at the ‘official’ car park for the White Horse and follow the signs to Waylands Smithy for a real treat....

Knowing that this is the oldest trackway in Europe in continuous use, when I walk on it, I love the sense of my feet echoing back down the track for millenia.

If you’re into birding, this short section never fails to disappoint. Keep ‘em peeled to see buzzard, brambling, greenfinch, yellowhammer, titmice (lots), kestrel, lark, plovers, thrushes, woodpeckers.

There are a number of barrows here, probably six or seven scattered around.

We passed a pair of large tumuli at SU519832, which must’ve once been part of the necropolis of Blewbury Down, for here we are between the Ridgeway and the line of Grim’s Ditch. A shufti of the O/S map reveals almost an alignment of tumuli, some in pairs, that seem to run parallel to Ridgeway. All are visible from it as you ride along.

The pair I admired at SU519832 were in a vast field of corn and has somehow escaped being ploughed over. The farmers here just cultivate around them in a wide strip and avoid any damage at all.

They are not particularly big nor clever, nor do they have any outstanding features but evidence of our prehistoric past lying there in today’s landscape for all to see -despite modern farming methods- still gives me a little tingly thrill.

...sit with me a moment longer on hillside, just above the head of the White Horse and look down and see Dragon Hill. Wow! What is this massive chalky children’s sandcastle? A landing pad for flying white horses? Certainly a significant ritual place. I think of Mexican temples, Guatemalan ruins at Tikal, Saqqara pyramid in Egypt. What happened here? It feels like a place of sacrifice or death, but not in a morbid way. Perhaps the dead were laid out on platforms up here, to be picked off by crows, or maybe a priest performed sky burials?