CianMcLiam

This site is featured in The Megalithic European as ‘Monkey’s Bridge’ though I asked a local from the village and they had not heard the name before.

The reason I was asking a local is because the directions in the book are great, if you are travelling in the right direction. However the book doesn’t specify which direction so if you enter Bweeng from the south there is no way in hell you will see either the shrine mentioned or the sign for Nad. Even on the way back they are hard to spot. Take the first turn left once you come to the village if you are coming from the south, take the last right turn if coming from the north. Keep going until you pass over the bridge then park at the next gate on the left.

The taller stone is huge, the smaller one is still quite a large stone, my photo above does not give a proper perspective so the smaller looks a lot more squat than it is.

I was here for one of the most gorgeous sunsets of the year so far, very pink with high scattered clouds and a huge almost full moon looming up behind the stones. Unfortunately my battery ran out so I couldn’t get any moon pics.

What a dissapointment! I was expecting massive stones jutting out of the horizon magnificently, instead I saw tinchy little stones cowering up to a pine plantation.

Luckily that was just the view from the road. Up close these stones are fantastic! My first large stone row and what an introduction. This is a great site, if the plantation and large clump of trees behind it were gone it would be spectacular. I spent a long time here taking in every angle and marvelling at the stones as the light changed, the row was pointing directly at the setting sun. The fallen stone is a shame but it does show how some things are not set in stone as it would seem and should be taken care of no matter how invincible it looks.

Over one hundred photos later I made my way back to the car with that warm feeling that today I really saw something.

The mysterious circle at last. It really is a magical place, I wish I had been able to climb up the hillside among the dense trees to find this clearing. The circle and its low ditch is like a sacred sanctum, if you look at the photos the surrounding tree branches look like hands reaching down towards the stones...

I met up with the legendary Tom FourWinds in Baltinglass and on we drove down a trackway with pot holes you could bury a horse in. Turns out we share quite a few interests; old stones, photography, fishkeeping, getting the hell out of mountain forests before its pitch dark etc etc. It was great to visit a site (especially one like this) with someone who you dont have to keep convincing that the muddy, trackless trek up to some old stones is worth the time and effort, and it was a pleasure. Sometimes it seems more productive to think out loud and have your thoughts bounced back.

But to the circle... Someone had stood some buried stones upright, little runts that at first made the circle look more complete, then made it look totally off-balance. Without careful observation it seemed that the builders were hedging their bets with the axis alignment here, its definitley close to the mid-winter sunset but which stone is the axial? Hard to tell but all might be revealed (literally) if the trees to the west were removed.

This is a place you could spend many hours at, just listening to the sounds overhead and in the trees, and not feel like civilisation was observing you.

This stone is really great, its also much taller than I remembered from my last visit. The grooves are very deep and perhaps are enhanced natural features of the stone. Its almost three metres tall and is clearly visible from the road from Tullow to the N80.

While I was taking some sunset photos I heard a very menacing snorting noise very close behind me. While the field seemed empty when I climbed over the gate, I was now face to face with a massive bull who was very unhappy to have visitors. I very slowly gathered up my stuff and paced back to the gate, with the bull and four others walking about three metres behind every step of the way. I could hear the snorting getting faster and faster and about 6 metres from the gate I made a run for it, throwing my tripod over the gate, the bull charged at his point and stopped just short of the gate, stamping and making very nasty noises and I was still not over the top but luckily he seemed satisfied I had left for good so he then turned and charged at another bull.

This is probably the closest I’ve been to serious injury out taking pictures so please, check every corner of the field you are in and adjoining fields if the gates are open, this could have ended up very seriously. I know a guy who lost a kidney and was lucky to be alive after a bull attackd so its so important to be aware of your surroundings even if you are distracted by some amazing stones.

A full moon brought me back to Clontygora, hoping to get a better picture of the moon between the superbly shaped court stones than last year (cianmcliam.smugmug.com/gallery/345408/1/13728798/Large) but I only confirmed what I thought already, its impossible to get a nice detailed moon shot by time its moved into the right position because the rest of the image is black, needs to be done during the late evening when the sky is still fairly bright.

Another dissapointment was the discovery that a HUGE new barn/workshop type thing has been built right across the road and is impossible to ignore while here.

Nevertheless, Clontygora is still a great place to be and hats off to whoever keeps the grass so neat. Of all the sites I’ve been to though, this place has the highest concentration of dog-dirt I’ve ever come across, even in the chamber. Be careful where you tread!

Poulnabrone may be another victim of the ‘pop megalithic’ syndrome wherby its immense popularity, ease of access, enormity of photographs and visitors means that it is so often belittled and dismissed. Probably the same phenomenon that causes an underground band to become instantly unpopular as soon as they get mainstream attention. Poulnabrone is a masterpiece of its kind, the design and engineering are superlative and if it were not for the rope surrounding it would be perfect. If this was discovered today or even if it were located miles from the nearest track it would get the proper respect and admiration it deserves. Get here very early or very late to avoid the embarrasingly uninformed tour guides and uninterested tour guests.

S**t! Uuughhhhh...... crap. F**K!!... B****X .......ARRRGGHHH slime!!!!.... ugh, at last.. Wwwwwwwwwwwoooow, maaan!!!

This is the sound of a person visiting Uragh for the first time, even the second or third time. The donation box now politely demands an ‘entry fee’ of one euro but if they are going to charge the least they can do is lay even a third-rate causeway or stepping stone path towards the hill. This weekend the ground was atrocious and I had to encourage an Australian couple to keep going after they turned back. They weren’t convinced. If you could only see the circle you would know it was worth every slip and slime.

Now I’m back again and its before dawn, not quite pitch black but there is not even a breath of wind and it is so quiet it feels unreal. This circle is like a painted back drop for a film, you simply couldn’t dream up a location like this.

Visit this place now, you have to see dawn breaking above the hills and waterfalls before you shuffle off this planet.

This circle is easy to find and also easy to reach. If you are on a hanglider with a pair of binoculars taped to your face that is...

This was my second time looking for this place, I gave up the first time and I have quite good eyesight. I actually ‘saw’ it and was glad to see the farmer was tending his sheep, until he pointed out a different spot, much further away! ‘You have a pair a tough boots with ya, dont ya?’ ‘Um no... but um, these walking shoes are watertight..’ Cut to farmer laughing, sort of nervously at first then building up to a hearty belly laugh bordering on the evil. Great start.

They should use this place to train the SAS, its murder getting across the bog after rain the few days beforehand. Barbed wire, super-slippy rocks, swamp holes disguised as tufts of grass, those rocks placed and balanced carefully so that when you stand on them they fart out water and muck onto your other shoe...

When you are there, you dont even think about your trousers being knee deep in crap, this spot is like a 3D postcard, spectacular doesn’t do it justice.

The stones are all high and have a craggy pointed-ness that makes them human like in stature similar to Ardgroom Outward up the road, they must be good to hold your attention up here but they were chosen very well. I didn’t want to leave here, and that wasn’t just because of the dastardly trek back to the car.

Ballyrenan Portal Tombs, 16th October 2005.

Very sad to see this place completly overgrown again, only the capstone poking out of the undergrowth is visible as you pass. The side opposite from the road is better, slightly. I did find however that a camera monopod makes a good swiping implement for claring vegetaion, after 15 minutes you could see the whole of one side again but I was too tired then to even make a start at the more overgrown side where you cant even walk.

I really liked it here, the morning was still bright and the tombs still retain a lot of presence despite their state and overgrown surroundings next to a barn.

The capstone-less tomb would have been very nice in its original state, I think I would have liked it better than its larger mate. The larger tomb gives the impression that it was a ‘throw it up and see if it sticks’ affair, still very nice and a little eccentric.

Maybe a discrete word in someones ear might bring some sunshine back into these tombs existence.

Drumskinny, 16th October 2005.

After a spectacular sunrise at Beltany Tops, the morning took a more gloomy and dank feel by the time I got to Drumskinny. It was 10.30am on a Sunday yet I wasn’t the first here, a couple were leaving just as I arrived.

The circle is really nice, ‘nice’ is a good word because it does feel ‘nice’ but not quite ‘right’. It can be hard to ignore the newness of the place though the stones are quite charming, it feels like it could be one of those modern public artworks you see in pretentious ‘Business Parks’. Its even been signed by the heritage people! (The missing stones have been carved to indicate they are not original). I didnt notice from other photos that its on such a slope, maybe this adds to the unrealness of the place, maybe the weather was affecting my mood...

Beaghmore Complex, 15 October 2005.

Fourwinds and A. Weir have some superb shots of this site with sunlight raking over the stones and grass and this is what I hoped to see before sunset today. Unfortunately I wasn’t counting on Saturday rush hour traffic in Armagh and Dungannon and missed the best light.

Arriving on a very windy evening I was not dissapointed for long, this place is incredible. You can almost feel the frenzy of activity here, the fervour with which the rows were scattered around the rings as if the world was about to end. Some theories consider this could well have been the scenario the builders thought they were facing as the peat bog swallowed up the workable land.

Trying to understand this place is like trying to square the circle using an abacus. Excuse the pun!