
We didn’t get to see the white lady at the stone tonight, but instead a band of ghostly celestial feral horses
We didn’t get to see the white lady at the stone tonight, but instead a band of ghostly celestial feral horses
A brooding stone at dusk
In contrast to Carnwnda which we stopped at later on the day, this dolmen seems all about the structure, the suspension of a megalith openly and on purpose into an area of long range viewspace. If Carnwnda was a cave shelter metaphor, this one is a mountain. But perhaps it needs the outcrop next to it, which birthed it’s raw materials, to work...
Cummings and Whittle, in a detailed landscape based analysis of Neolithic monuments in Wales, undertook visual mapping of the views present when placing oneself at the monuments.
In the case of Ffyst Samson, they classed the views from the NE to the SE as closed. But if you stand on the outcrop, you get a full 360 panorama including the Preselis. And notably, the capstone is positioned on the horizon looking out to sea (Aber Mawr bay) where there is no outcrop or mountain in the panorama. Was it built to fill that view, and to reference the sea? The capstone even looks shaped like a chunky crescent with a scalloped edge, imitating the shape of the bay it ‘looks down on’ if you follow the sight line from the outcrop.
Wild speculation likely, but this one feels like the landscape around it was crucial to it’s siting, and the outcrop inextricably interwoven into whatever it’s builders were up to.
The outcrop next door, which seems to be inseparable from the actual dolmen with regard to vibe and function? Dolmen down field on the horizon
Shamelessly breaks Kammer’s Law with regard to the image of the monument, but attempts to get away with it via the inclusion of dogs...
Visited at twilight on February 13th, 2025.
This monument is in such a great spot, cracking views all over Strumble Head and out to sea, including the lighthouse. Although it’s earth-fast/submegalithic/propped stone, it’s far from subtle in appearance when look you up at Carn Wnda....a massive horizontal slab lying contrary to all the vertical flats of the crags around it.
This one seems all about the creation of the chamber, for whatever purpose it was put to. Jack up a slab in situ, make a pit, then stone wall all around to make a chamber. The aesthetics of floating a stone don’t seem relevant here, as if the underpinning ideology or function was of a different kind to the dolmens.
The great evidence destroyer Fenton got to this one too, and noted in 1848:
‘From the quantities of red and black ashes mixed with portions of what seemed to be decomposed burnt bones and small fragments of rude pottery which I found...in the hollow below, I felt no hesitation in forming the conclusion that it had been a place of internment‘
The red ashes are interesting, although Fenton doesn’t say if they plant or animal?
February 12th. Visit on a full moonlight night, no wind. Foxes and pheasants calling in the valley below. The dolmen, fat and pregnant and glowing ethereal, choreographer to the stars as they dance onto her nocturnal stage.
Long exposure photo gone wrong. Looks like somebody punctured the moon like an egg, rupturing onto the capstone.
The capstone feels as naturally groovy as Simon and Garfunkel. One area has quite dense modern etchings like a lover’s tree. Was this really done in 1879?
The dolmen was bathed in the full moon tonight, it felt like daylight in the field
Visited the dolmen on the frosty night of February 7th, not long after Imbolc and on a waxing moon. First time we have been there since Storm Darragh blew in. Unfortunately this has turned the route that most people use, the public footpath off the minor road to the south of Llanglydwen that goes past Pen-pontbren, into a Grade A assault course. Fallen pines and firs have come down like dominos all over the path, and as with many places, there has been no attempt to clear up. We had to go through the fields south of the path, and it looked like we had not been the first to do so. The path badly needs the council to get in there with chainsaws.
We were worried that the beech grove around the dolmen was going to be similarly battered, but storm damage has been thankfully minimal. A couple of split or uprooted trees nearby but the sylvan feel of this unique spot remains intact. There was a nice round chunk of quartz on the floor of the chamber that wasn’t there last time. The white water river section in the gorge below rumbling to itself, and easy to imagine the spirits of the woodland and the ancestors tickling the edges of perception.
Moon from underneath the capstone edge
Whilst recognising everyone’s right to ritual and celebration of these spots, surely this kind of long term scarring is out of bounds. Plus the actual image is, let’s face it, totally rubbish on aesthetic grounds...don’t think the local plod are likely to catch our Dan though.
The second more disturbed summit barrow, which Figgis tells us was excavated at the beginning of the previous century, and found to contain ‘nothing but charcoal’ (which probably got chucked away)
The larger of the two summit barrows with the trig point. Unexcavated and undisturbed. Cerrig Lladron on the horizon, which has it’s own huge rocky barrow which by contrast is jumped on by thousands of tourists every year.
This red coloured stone, on the footpath a few hundred yards NE from the stone pair, looked like a piece of shaped megalithic cheese
The further away outlier, which definitely makes you think they are a male-female pair.
The nearest outlier with Orion overhead (with dog instead of attack ships on fire). This is a chunky groover
A very soggy nocturnal visit to Gors Fawr after two days of torrential rain, making the bog siting even more sodden and sucky than usual. Compensation was given in that finally the stars were visible after days and days of murk.
The suggestion (and apparent antiquarian accounts) of an avenue between the circle and the stone pair seems to feel ‘right’ on the ground, although being also the route of the footpath that cuts across to Mynachlog-ddu Common it’s obviously well walked.
However, there are some more rocks along the path that seem a bit odd, like they could have been placed. A reddish weathered rock that looked like a giant wedge of cheese (of the same kind that holds the little plaque at the entrance to the site) was striking. What if the avenue to the outliers was part of an ancient trackway (following the footpath and then the modern road) up to the skirt of Carn Sian and via that onto the Preselis? All speculative, but the area around is littered with (still) standing stones like Glynsaithmaen and Rhos Fach, all of which would surely have existed for centuries as contemporaries in the landscape.
(This is the English translation of a poem by Waldo Williams in which he eulogises the moorland around Puncheston – Cas’ Mael. His descriptions of skylarks and stones are pretty spot on)
On Weun Cas’ Mael
I’ll walk once more on Weun Cas’ Mael -
And bushes of gorse tell the tale,
Sick withered winter without fail
Is losing the day.
‘Our kindly sky will be blue in a while,‘
Flaming, they say.
Even today, over the drear
Dank moorland, when a moment’s clear
A skylark gives it’s confident cheer,
Zestful and strong,
Inspiring hope in the country near,
Unlocks bright song.
Oh, blossom on the roughest tree,
Oh, song on the steep, wild and free -
One sweet from the one strength, to be
The brave delight
Of bare acres the world can’t see
Or value right
Wales of dark moorland and stone,
Nurse of the mind that stands alone,
From age to age your strength’s been shown
And still it stays.
Bring us to share in, O make known
Your life, your ways!
The lovely severity you show
Woke favour of man with man, to grow
A company all one, and so
By you empowered,
Knowing no slavery, their slow
Order flowered.
From steel captivity, low hurt
Crosses Cas’ Mael. O save us yet!
Men serve the false power in the pit
Of dark Tre Cwn.
To the pure breezes, raise us our
Of the cave’s tomb!
As the Lark gives from your ground
Point and zest in his circling round,
Your praise let each gift teach to sound,
Nurture and grow it,
And grant me, Wales, that I be found,
For your sake, poet.
We probably shouldn’t publish this as this is one of our favourite sites to walk the dogs where we hardly see anyone...so if you make it up via TMA and see two loud Collies running around and barking, doff your metaphorical cap and keep your distance :)
Mynydd Castlebythe is a lonely, wild heathery hill just outside Puncheston. Posting here on account of the barrow cemetery at the summit (two round barrows and two ring barrows). The highest round barrow is topped by a trig point. The views are fantastic and stretch to Gower, the mountains of Mid Wales, and all the Pembrokeshire peaks including Carn Ingli and the Preselis.
To get there, look for the hamlet of Castlebythe on the map. It’s only essentially a few houses, a farm and a churchyard. At the crossroads, turn left and drive up onto the hillside along a minor road. You can park up on the left a few hundred yards after crossing the cattle grid. Walk straight up the steep hill path on the right. You will probably not see anyone, although if you are very unlucky the local fox hunting w**krs will be up there on their yearly blood fest.
Coflein link with the stone as depicted by JC Young in one of her 1980s standing stone ‘portraits’. Don’t think she would have had any trouble with subjects getting fidgety
The stone on a snowy night at the turn of the year.
This is what Nash tells us is an Early Bronze Age cup and ring mark on the capstone. It’s got quite lichen covered when compared to his photo in ‘The Architecture of Death’. Be warned – it’s VERY unimpressive!
The spring uphill from the monument. Difficult to appreciate in the dark, but it seems surrounded almost on purpose by low upright rocks
Looking down at the chamber and the forecourt ‘altar’ stone from uphill
Garn Turne has always felt to us like Pentre Ifan’s evil twin. There are a few similarities between the two sites – the multiphase construction that seemed to begin with a sacred stone dug out of a pit, the later addition of a forecourt, the evidence of burning in and around the capstone – but also some significant divergences that give Garn Turne a very different atmosphere.
Whereas Pentre Ifan seems light, airy, almost untethered, Garn Turne seems earthbound, dark and menacing. The sheer weight obviously present in the capstone and it’s accompanying megaliths is part of it. But there has always seemed to us a kind of haunting nastiness about it, as if the ghosts that linger there died in pain or unwillingly. Could be just us though...
Anyway, unlike Pentre Ifan which feels tidy and well on the beaten track, this site is rough and ready. It’s in a large scraggy field with blackthorny bits, some beautiful wind whipped old hawthorns and a gorsedd festooned with well, gorse. You may be unlucky and find cows in it or sometimes sheep.
The whole site is interesting, as it really seems that the natural features that were important to the monument builders are still intact. The aforementioned rock outcrop dominates the site and the immediate landscape around, and gives off a power all of it’s own. As mentioned by others (e.g. Children and Nash) there is a spring adjoining the outcrop and directly west uphill from the monument. The spring is surrounded by rocks that almost look placed there in a circular fashion. You can climb the outcrop quite easily and it’s a great spot to chill out in nice weather.
Tonight though, Garn Turne was it’s usual cold and doomy self in the mist, so we took a few pictures, had a dram and were off. Will return in the sun so tbc
The carn just below the stone, Carn Ingli above. A raven was cronking atop it just before this picture was taken
It’s quite a fat stone from this angle. Newport Beach in the distance
The stone with Carn Ingli on the horizon and an unusual phenomenon called Pembrokeshire sun
Not sure if this stone matched Sweetcheat’s one? This one we have always known as the Carn Llwyd standing stone...it’s bulky, pointed and surrounded by obvious well preserved kerbing.
These two have been commandeered as gateposts and probably have always been just that, but there’s always the possibility that there was once more to it....
Carn Ffoi is a great spot to visit if you are in the Carn Ingli area, and has a high concentration of Psilocybin in the autumn. Perhaps ‘They Were On Hard Drugs’?
For those who fancy a real deep dive, the Resources at the foot of this page include a comprehensive site report from 2017.
A revisit tonight to this great stone with customary rubbish North Pembrokeshire weather.
The stone is a good size, standing 2.6 metres high and having an impressive bulk to it. Looking downhill towards the north, it could be said to resemble a broad shouldered hooded figure. Visiting is easy if you’re doing a pitstop, as there is a big pull in place on the road next to where the public footpath leaves the road.
(NB there is still some crappy rusting old fencing dug into the ground around it, and whilst not visually intrusive could be a hazard for dogs).
The stone is both aesthetically pleasing and nicely located. The views to the north are dominated by the ‘sleeping goddess’ sacred mountain of Carn Ingli and it’s Common, with the Gwaun Valley in between. Uphill to the south, although not visible, is Waun Mawn and a collection of standing stones and pairs in the basin to the north of Cerrig Lladron (the footpath heading south will get you there via a remote hill farm with some mad looking and barky Collies). The stone, or whatever it may have formed part of, could easily have been a marker or connection between two ritual centres. We, like everyone else, have never found anything that looks like the ruined cromlech that was supposedly spotted in 1914.
There is also apparently a possible Bronze Age cairn, the nicely named Carn Wrach (Cairn of the Witch) 460m to the southeast, but all that’s visible on the ground are lots of rocks which the farmer will no doubt start JCB’ing as he’s doing in the Tre-Fach stone field.
The tor at dusk. The modern petrochemical industrial complex of Milford Haven can be seen like burning torches on the horizon
The easiest of the barrows to find