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One of three portal tombs that lie on the north side of the road into Málainn Mhóir, this is an almost complete ruin. It’s in a pasture field up a slight hill, about 250 metres from the Carraig to Malin More road. All that remains standing is one, admittedly large, portal stone. The chamber is in a state of total collapse and there is much field clearance dumped on the remains. There is an Irish government fógra here, marking it as a protected site.

Another roadside bullaun encountered on our short trip to the south-west Donegal Gaeltacht. It’s at a junction, beside a stream on a small lane off the Carraig to Teelin road. The stone, abutting a similar, but much larger stone, is made of a reddish conglomerate and much eroded.

With so much to see in the megalith-rich townland of Malin More, you could be forgiven for skipping this. That would be an error however and its road-side location makes it even more attractive for a quick nosey.

About 200 metres south-east of Dg. 90, a double portal tomb that I missed out on this time, it’s also about a kilometre north-east of the famous 6 tomb alignment and on the main road west into the hamlet of Malin More itself.

There are two stones here – a large millstone embedded in the turf, and the bullaun stone, roughly a metre and a half square, with the 23 cms deep basin set towards the south edge. The small stream that flows past the stone is a delight and the whole setting is well looked after, beside the driveway of a house.

The first of the many megalithic sites to be encountered as you travel west into the large townland of Málainn Mhóir (Malin More). It’s 500 metres before Cloghanmore (Dg. 95) and on the other side of the road.

The tomb, like the others in the vicinity except Cloghanmore, is trashed, and hard to interpret on the ground. This ground is heavy and the grasses are high – the field, boggy pasture, feels like it hasn’t been grazed in years.

The monument is about 10 metres into the field from the road but the bank is high – a judicious bit of the usual clambering had us beside the tomb in a relatively short time. I couldn’t make head nor tail of the place until I got back and looked at the plan. The round structure plonked on top of the gallery is thought to be a lime kiln, so any hopes that there were substantial remains here could be quickly forgotten (I imagine the kiln builders built it here because of the ready supply of stones and not for any proto-sacred reasons). There are some structural stones of the gallery remaining, but with the tall grass and rushes hindering any easy interaction I would say this one is for the completists only.

I felt a bit like Fagan (in 1847) and Moore (in 1871) who both, on their visits here, “found it difficult to interpret, perhaps because of its disordered state…”. That, and the rain. Well really only the rain – but the place is not looked after, ‘state care’ being meant only euphemistically. Board of Works restoration at the end of the 19th century, the concrete track in the 20th and a bit of signage and the place is left to itself.

The car park is handy. So is the concrete track. Then you’re more or less on your own, and it’s swampy. And the rain. And the two companions, me thinking I should have left them in the car.

I would normally say that this is a fantastic place – the two subsidiary chambers, one in each arm of the court; the two carved stones; and the two parallel chambers, reminiscent of magnificent Magheraghanrush in Sligo. But not today. We were beaten back to the car by the torrent, waterproofs proving to be barely water-resistant in the West Donegal downpour. In these times of I-take-what-I-can-get, this was a very rushed visit and utterly frustrating. I’ll have to come back.

One of those sites that I’ve seen a lot of shots of, looked forward to visiting, got there finally and found it not remotely similar to what I’d imagined. Which is not to say that it’s not amazing, just that I found it a tad underwhelming, especially after the drenching back and Cloghanmore.

The laneway that runs along the fields that contain the tombs is extremely narrow. Eamonn Cody, in the Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume VI, County Donegal (2002) numbers the tombs 1 to 6 from west to east. After Cloghanmore and still in the slipstream of the torrent, I didn’t feel like vaulting the gate, so I only photographed 1 and 6 at opposing ends of the ‘alignment’.

Both 1 and 6 are the two most impressive chambers. Cody mentions that there may have been a seventh and it’s worth quoting from the previous mentioned survey: “Thomas Fagan …, who visited the site in 1847, refers to the existence of seven chambers, … but provides details of only those numbered 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 here. He claimed that the chambers had stood in one long cairn that he estimated originally measured 100 yards E-W and 20 yards N-S.” Cody notes the larger gap between chambers 5 and 6 and says that this might have contained the destroyed 7th chamber.

There are remnants of a cairn at chamber 6, at the top end of the alignment and in someone’s garden. It’s the largest of the six but difficult to get a sense of given its location. I did clamber up and attempt a shot back west down the alignment, but in our hurried, drenched and flustered state didn’t meet with much success. The bottom chamber, chamber 1, is impressively large, but was surrounded by a flock of dreadlocked sheep so we didn’t enter the field. Another one I’ll have to return to.

Beside St. Columba’s Church in Gleann Cholm Cille, station number one of the Turas pattern-walk, this is an oddity, marked as an unclassified megalithic tomb. The boundary wall of an ancient track that leads north in the direction of Farranmacbride court tomb (visible from here) crosses the east side of the mound.

It’s still recognisable as a megalithic tomb so how it ended up in its christianised state is open to a bit of research. The ancient track is beautifully unkempt. There is some dry-stone walling on the northern end of the mound. Cody says possibly the remains of a court tomb but that will need further investigation.