A little bit closer. I’ve been looking at this carving for quite a while and I got this strong feeling it symbolises a sun god sowing seeds and sunshine for a good harvest. Time for some fresh air methinks..
Cairn T right hand recess and decorated chamber orthostat
Cairn X1, decorated slab which seems to have been the backstone of the rear chamber of the cairn which stood here.
Avebury at night, waiting for the moon to rise, early June 2007.
The largest concentration of motifs at the south-western end of the outcrop.
After tripping on a stone I thought how nice and Carrowmore- like it looked from down there...
Looking down the passage into the rear chamber. Some flash was used to balance out the natural light.
The full passage and end chamber lit by a battery of flashes!
The inner-most sanctum
Full Moon Rising
Approx 00:45am 3-06-07
Nightfall 01-06-07
This stone was found in Kilwarden which I think is near Castledermot Co. Kildare and now sits in the National Museum in Dublin, also works part time as a chair.
When I get more info/co-ords I’ll try and add it as a site.
The bites of many nasty winged enemies are still nagging my hands and arms so it’s necessary to remind myself why it was worth it and more.
The ‘Hag of Beara’ is well signposted on the coast road between Ardgroom and Eyeries, there’s a bit of hard shoulder on the corner where you can park.
The rock is through the gate and across about 20m of marshy ground to a small track, you could walk right past it like I did if you dont spot all the offerings strewn over it!
The rock itself is wonderfully weathered and resembles a camel with no legs or neck. There’s great views seawards and across the bay.
It also features the wierdest assortment of ‘offerings’ I have ever come across, car remote controls, batteries, hair scrunchies and a mobile phone belt clip all share crevices with the more usual coins, ‘goddess’ figurine, seashells and berries.
For a split second I thought the hag was having fun with me, I was trying to set a manual exposure on the camera but no matter what I tried, even turning the camera off and removing batteries, I could not set an aperture below F8 even though it was an F4 lens, what the hell???!! Of course there was a simple explanation, I had left the camera in ‘bracketing’ mode at Drombohilly but had not taken the last picture of the bracketing sequence there! For just a moment.............
The Hag of Beara is a natural weathered outcrop about 6ft long and 3ft high which, with some judicious imagination, vaguely outlines the shape of an old stooping hag. A crescent moon hangs overhead.
There’s a lot more going on on this stone than first meets the eye. Though extremely weathered (unlikely this rock was ever covered) there are remains of a large number of carvings on both carved surfaces that only showed up with extreme side lighting.
Looking into the rear chamber from within the first chamber.
Most of this carving was visible above the bog line!
These are the most heavily eroded carvings, the majority of it is under present ground level.
The ‘Lusty Man’ foreground, Janus figure in the background.
This panel is on the next outcrop to the west of the panel Greywether has given gps co-ords for. It consists of two cup and rings with almost octopus-legs like parallel lines bent in the middle and two cup and rings joined by parallel lines to the right of the pic. Apologies for the odd appearance of the pic, one half was in shade below bushes, the other was in broad daylight.
Albert, the snappily dressed scarecrow. In fact, in scarecrow circles he’s a renowned snob.
Visited on 28/4/07. Found 5 panels in total though I believe there are a couple of dozen more at least. The fields with all the outcrops are divided up and there were lambs in the largest so I didn’t venture in there.
If you are planning on visiting, please make it your business to ask first as the landowners are fed up with people wandering in. They have also put up a ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ sign. It was also the first time I’ve been asked about insurance but luckily I had my photographers insurance cert with me.
Apart from the three obvious panels on the high outcrop with bushes on it, I found two other panels, one had a cup and two half rings and what looked very like a scaled down ormaig-alike rosette. The other had a single cup with two rings. I’d love to see a plan of the panels so I could see which ones I missed. If someone had told me I would one day spend a Saturday night literally standing in a field staring at outcrops maybe I would have specialised in photographing bar stool designs manufactured from 1998 to 2005.
The laughing stone of Mullagharoy
