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The Modern Antiquarian Forum » Favourite site visited 2019 |
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thelonious 330 posts |
Edited Dec 30, 2019, 08:40
Dec 30, 2019, 08:34
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Just a couple of days left of the year. What's everyone's favourite place they have visited this year? Been a lucky year and I managed to get to some great places. Hard to pick just one but when I think about the year my mind keeps going back to Drombeg stone circle. Such an adventure to get there. Even now it feels a long way away from up here in Aberdeenshire. Just so glad I made the trip. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/1026/drombeg.html Hope you all had a nice 2019 and hopefully 2020 will be a great stone year for everyone. Am I right in thinking TMA website is 20 years old next year? That's a grand old age!
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tomatoman 118 posts |
Dec 30, 2019, 12:05
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2019 was a quiet year for such site visits for me, however I would mention a visit to Creswell Crags with a couple of groups which included well-behaved younger children. The female guide was EXCELLENT in her informative and engaging manner. The kids learnt a lot, didn't get bored and the adults all clearly enjoyed the experience. A job done very well. (We all realised on the way back to the visitor centre, that we were all visiting from various parts of Scotland!)
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thesweetcheat 6216 posts |
Dec 30, 2019, 18:19
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Been a bit of an odd year for me, with various costly domestic bills and a couple of bouts of being ill one way or another. In between that we walked the Northumberland coast path from Burnmouth into Newcastle, had a very enjoyable week on the Isle of Man and I managed to get to a load of sites in a Bodmin Moor day trip that I'd been wanting to visit for many years. Also a very memorable trip to Avebury in beautiful pristine snow. Favourite new sites for me would be: The various Northumberland stone circles and Roughting Linn. The highlight from that area was an arduous walk into a gale to see Threestoneburn circle (it was easier on the way back) which greatly exceeded expectations. Duddo, Dod Hill and Hethpool were all great too (not to mention a raft of amazing castles). In Cornwall the highlight was probably King Arthur's Hall, but the day took in Emblance Down, Leaze, Stripple Stones and Trippet Stones ad some other bits and pieces, so really was an ensemble triumph. It was also nice to find a newly cleared route to Lanyon Quoit, which prompted a first visit for 8 years. On Man I most enjoyed the evening visit to Mull Hill, but there were plenty of star sites there. Finally the newly discovered ring cairn above Tintern was a welcome addition to local prehistory for me.
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thesweetcheat 6216 posts |
Dec 30, 2019, 18:22
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Oh and best hillfort was Burrow Hill in Shropshire, another site which exceeded expectations.
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tjj 3606 posts |
Edited Dec 30, 2019, 23:26
Dec 30, 2019, 21:08
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Finally made it to N.Ireland earlier in the year primarily to see the Giant's Causeway. County Antrim was a journey of discovery including visiting Rathlin Island. Later in the year (October) a few days in Pembrokeshire blew me away ... literally. Pentre Ifan - magnificent. However, the site which gave me an almost mystical experience has to be Cairn Holy, although in saying this I know it is about perception on the day. After a long, grueling journey on the M6, we visited by pure chance the evening we journeyed to Stranraer before catching the ferry to N.I. the next day. I spotted a brown heritage sign and my companion obligingly turned the car round and went back. As we walked uphill along on a woodland track, not knowing what to expect the clouds disappeared and everything became infused with golden, evening sunlight. The site itself was amazing - for anyone who hasn't found it yet, do try. https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/cairn-holy-chambered-cairns/getting-there/
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thelonious 330 posts |
Edited Dec 31, 2019, 22:34
Dec 31, 2019, 22:19
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Never been to Creswell Crags. Just had a quick look on trainline - Aberdeen to Creswell 7h 49m 4 changes, long but tempting, very tempting.
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thelonious 330 posts |
Edited Dec 31, 2019, 22:35
Dec 31, 2019, 22:21
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Your Avebury photos were something else. Seems a long time back now I guess.
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thelonious 330 posts |
Dec 31, 2019, 22:25
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I'd not heard of Rathlin Island before reading your post tjj. I've been having a little google of the island. Looks great, my sort of place. Definitely one for the future hopefully.
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GLADMAN 950 posts |
Jan 03, 2020, 23:48
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Other than the incomparable Pen Pumlumon Fawr: https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/4168/pen_pumlumonfawr.html since I've been there before ...the 'place' would have to be Skye's other Hag's Hill: https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/6282/beinn_na_caillich.html The archaeology, this utterly obscure gem in the wilds of Mid Wales: https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/19439/bwlch_graigfawr_teifi_pools.html
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ryaner 679 posts |
Jan 05, 2020, 12:33
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I found it hard to restrict this to a favourite site so I took the liberty of doing a year review. Moylehid, on Belmore mountain in Fermanagh, has three megalithic sites - a court tomb, lost in vegetation, a ruined, diminutive passage tomb, and the real star, and probably my favourite site of the year, a ring cairn. We suffered to get here, traversing the tumbledown, boggy deforested and forested mess on the east side of the mountain. They’re working here, thinning out and felling the pines, but this was one where we nearly gave up, my obsessive determination pushing us to the limit. And then it was revealed, in its clearance, quiet all around and intruded on by us interlopers, deer whistling in alarm, scared by our presence. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/19031/moylehid.html Moneylahan was no hike at all, though the field it’s in is waterlogged, even in summer. The tomb itself is wrecked but keeps a lot of its structure. However, Benwiskin is the real star here. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/14114/moneylahan.html The walk from the car park (yes indeed) close to Ravensdale passage grave (Clermont Cairn), 510m across to Carnawaddy cairn, 475m, and back, on the Cooley peninsula, was medium core, but the views north and south as the cloud cleared were memorable. The higher Mournes across Carlingford Lough were still shrouded in cloud. Directly south it seemed that we could see all the way to Wexford. The peninsula stretched out in front of us, about to take off into space. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/16075/ravensdale_park.html + https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/19429/carnawaddy.html A news story recently of a helicopter mountain rescue here reminded me of our day on the hill. I’d read Stefan Bergh had excavated here and he’d compared it to Mullaghfarna. On the edge of the Burren, you could be on the edge of the world up here, the monuments dwarfed into insignificance by the magnificence of the landscape. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/19292/turlough_hillknockycallanan.html On a scorcher of a day at the height of summer the walk up to the caves and then on to the summit by a circuitous route to the south of the ridge completed a Sligo ambition. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/3096/kesh_corran_cairn.html + https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/19251/caves_of_kesh.html I’d looked down on Mullaghfarna from the main ridge of the Carrowkeel complex. I’ve looked down on it from other peoples’ photographs. I’ve imagined it from maps, but I’d never visited it. What a strange and powerful place and easily accessible. And then I climbed up to the cairns perched above it and looked down on it again. Was it a village? Or a seasonal gathering place? I prefer the village theory, but only because I want it to be. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/3095/mullaghfarna.html Sligo has so much to reveal - the Carrickglass or Labby Rock dolmen down the hill from this is essential - but you would do well not to miss this, the eastern edge of the Lough Arrow prehistoric complex that includes Carrowkeel/Keshcorran. Just another hilltop cairn? Maybe, but that erratic says something else. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/19199/barroe_north.html Most of my favourites this year required effort. Nearby Baurdnadomeeny and Shanballyedmond are spectacular, more-or-less-roadside sites, but this was a two mile trek down country lanes and across fields and forestry, almost lost and given up on. We almost gave up but, not for the last time this year, we said try a bit more, it’s around here somewhere. And there it was, in the same place it had been since the bronze age. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/8009/cureeny_commons.html Ah ah Aghnacliff. Thirteen years after my first visit, on the way to elsewhere, how could I not stop? Maddest of the maddest, Aghnacliff is a gift from the ancestors that says it wasn’t, and shouldn’t be, all hardship and survival - megalithic flair extraordinaire. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/2015/aghnacliff.html So you wear your waterproof (LOL) walking boots, prepared for the 3km hike from the east that looks like the shortest and sanest way to this very isolated of tombs. You’re well into it when you realise that three quarters of your journey is going to entail traversing a waterlogged bog and you keep asking your companion, ‘are you sure you want to do this?’ and he keeps telling you to fuck off, that he’s not going to let you off the hook for bringing him on another mad excursion to see a bunch of rocks. 200 metres away from the tomb relief is at hand and the ground dries out and you’re on limestone pavement and as mad as it all has been, you’re here at one of the most complete wedge tombs still in existence. And just up the way is one of the longest cairns you’ve ever seen and you’ve nearly forgotten that you still have to return back across the swamp from hell, feet soaked to shit. One of those once-in-a-life excursions, finished at Largy court tomb as a little bonus. Spare socks in the car and spare shoes. Aaaaaaah. https://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/19007/aghamore.html Here’s to 2020. Happy new year to everyone.
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