postman

The cairn is easy to spot, but no stones protrude at all, it is entirely grassed over. Carl has unfortunately mistaken a small jumble of stones immediately over the fence for the cairn, the cairn is further off in to the field, seeing as his coflein description states the cairn to be about a meter high with a tail of spoil to the NE, I cant see why he was mistaken. He should probably take a Sweetcheat with him, he’s very handy to have around, and then some.
Views are seriously curtailed by trees except to the east off down into the Usk valley, and the north up hill eventually to Y Pygwn.
A nice little cairn, if a little battered. What with all the other juicy sites around here I’d probably only come here if you’ve got time, or you’ve a certain level of obsession.

Just got time for one more site before we leave the area for pastures new, it’s relatively straight forward to find, Carl’s directions are spot on.
Coflein gives it’s dimensions as 1.4m by 0.6m by 0.9m, but does not say which one of these numbers goes with it’s height. As the stone is longer than it is high my guess would be 1.4m long, 0.6m wide and 0.9m high. They wont even commit to a date or even if it is a standing stone, but rather an earthfast boulder. But with all the other antiquities around here it almost certainly is a standing stone. All be it a rather tidgy one. On the other side of the fence is a small collection of large stones, which I think Carl mistook for the nearby cairn, but that is further off into the field. So what are these stones ? Coflein says nothing about them, they seem to be the same kind of stone as the mini menhir, perhaps it was all one stone but got broken up and dragged away but that was as far they got. Probably not though.
The stone enjoys good views across the Usk reservoir to the mountains of the Brecon Beacons.

Carl’s directions are spot on, almost, I would just add park by the trees and hop over the fence. This cairn is bigger and less despoiled than its near neighbor to the west, Pant Madog, and there’s no trig point to get in the way. According to Coflein it is a meter higher than Carl’s approximation, which accords well with what we saw. But neither of them mention the wondrous views north and east over Trecastle and Sennybridge. Trees once more obscure views to the distant Brecon Beacon mountains.
A good cairn apparently undisturbed, if there were no stone circles round here this would be my sitting and pondering place
The Cairn is not visible from the road.

Parking is still easy, if a trifle muddy, and apparently it still has the same dimensions, and a trig point too.
But settling for a view from the road is never going to be enough for me, so I deftly skip over the barbed wire fence, Alken wasn’t so deft, but here we are circling this neat little cairn. From here another cairn should be visible down the lane but trees obscure the view of it and the mountains.
Farming techniques have gone right up to the edge of the cairn which is grass covered leaving a square shape to it.
Good cairn, good place, crap OS.

Carl ! you’ve spelled Pygwn wrong twice, two different ways.

Cairn 2 is very similar in size to cairn 1, only without the stones for a cist, though it still has the obligatory scoop taken out of it’s top. Tremendous mountain views from here, and you can see the forest that has engulfed the Pant Meddygon stones.
If the cairn were a few feet higher you might just be able to see the near by stone circles from it’s top.
Not much else can be said about this grassy mound other than it is part of a bigger complex including another cairn, two stone circles, a fallen menhir,and assorted mystery stones. If you come here make sure you see it all.

Coflein says this about cairn 1..............A cairn 9.0m in diameter and o.9m high. A hollow in the center reveals what may be part of a cist. Two cairns were opened in this vicinity c.1824, one produced two cinerary urns, the other a boconical pygmy cup.........
However they don’t mention how much of a bugger it is to find nor does it mention the long but glorious views of the Brecon Beacons, today they are snow capped and low clouds swirl endlessly about.
It should have been easy enough to find, but we’re both getting old and I at least am easily confused, it didn’t help with all the recent tile stone quarries here either.
But having found it, it is quite a good cairn, mostly grassed over,a small bush grows out of it’s side and the cist remnants are still clear and obvious.
Cairn 2 is very visible from here and above at the Roman camps, so we go there.

It’s been quite some time since my first time here, and I think it would have been another quite some time if not for Evergreen dazed insisting he had to go right away. Unfortunately his misses was ill (or he didn’t like the weather reports) so it was just thesweetcheat and I.
It rained nearly all the way here, and with my sciatic leg urging me to crash the car and die, it wasn’t perfect, otherwise another nice drive down the A49. It had stopped raining by the time we got there, and started to snow instead. Weather proofing donned we set off down the track, which is wholly unpassable to all except for tractors and tanks. With snow coming down sideways we struck off the track and headed for the stones, they are below the hill with the Roman forts and as such unmissable. Eventually, it’s always further than you think, we arrive at the stooones, miffed with the crappy weather, but pleased to find such a wonderful site.
We wander fairly haphazardly, photographing this and that, The bigger of the two circles is pretty much intact, it’s two most striking stones are a flat topped loaf like stone and the other a chair shaped stone, could these two prominent stones frame an entrance ?
The smaller ring only has four stones to it, all leaning, where Carl saw his fallen stone I don’t know, perhaps Alken saw it.
Where stones are missing there are holes filled with water.
This is a great site, but it’s not till now that I realised just how complex it is.
We decide to go off looking for the two nearby cairns, the one nearer to the Roman forts proved harder to find, namely due to looking in the wrong place. But from that cairn we could easily see the other cairn, the one which Carl stumbled across.
Both cairns have good distant views of the Brecon Beacons, which today have snow upon their higher reaches. From this cairn there is a big boulder nearby,we mosey on over (it’s stopped snowing now).It is a big stone next to some excavated pool like area, it would serve as a good point to leave the track and head over to the stone circles via the more obvious of the two Y Pygwn cairns.
From the cairn that is No 2 we head for the fallen monolith, half way there we come across two stones,one could be the outlier that Carl found, but five yards from it is a lower stone, prehistoric goal posts or an obvious boundary between the living and the dead,(sniggers).
The big fallen stone would have marked the winter solstice sunrise from the center of the bigger circle, and it would have been the biggest stone here. But now it lies broken amid that thick horrible grass that likes to hide stones. From the fallen stone to the ring half way is another prostrate stone with a weird worn groove upon it, a line drawn through both fallen stones would also touch the western arc of the big circle.
From the smaller circle we spotted a possible stone row, possible or not it leads to cairn 2.
So.... to completely “get” this place more than one trip is advised and have a really good walk around, I cant say that all we saw was part of the plan, but I think we saw all there was to see, making it a very complex complex.

It’s all yours Simon.