Megalithic and Prehistoric Sites

[Voley]

Going to a couple of these this weekend. I'm helping out with the walk this afternoon. Sunday's 'Megalithic meander in the shadow of Carn Galva' would be up your street ska invita I reckon.

Will possibly be spamming this thread to death over the next fortnight from Orkney.

 

[Brainaddict]

I made it to Castlerigg stone circle the other week. Very nice, and great scenery. A little bit too busy though, even in May, sometimes the less famous circles are more enjoyable for the tranqility.

 

[Voley]

The Ring of Brodgar, Orkney, this afternoon:

 

[Brainaddict]

Amazing shot, I assume you used a proper SLR?

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Just been to visit Carnac on our way to the Dordogne. Too much to see in too little time. Just enough time to realise that this whole area would easily repay a fortnight's holiday. Lovely cider too.

 

[brogdale]

Just been to visit Carnac on our way to the Dordogne. Too much to see in too little time. Just enough time to realise that this whole area would easily repay a fortnight's holiday. Lovely cider too.

Spent 3 weeks down there in 2018 & we felt that we only scraped the Megalithic surface. Perhaps way too much cider

 

[Voley]

Amazing shot, I assume you used a proper SLR?

Thanks but no, just taken on my phone.

Stones of Stenness this evening. Orkney's something else, it really is.

 

[ska invita]

Thanks but no, just taken on my phone.

Stones of Stenness this evening. Orkney's something else, it really is.

View attachment 325268

For the first time in my life im feeling the pull to go to stones for solstice, not even for the moment, just this time of year when the days are long... Sadly don't think I can this time. That looks like the best place on earth right now ...

 

[Artaxerxes]

This looks amazing

The Cave Paintings of the Cosquer Cave in France

The Cosquer Cave in Marseille, France lies deep under the sea where many prehistoric rock art paintings and rock art engravings are preserved. The discovery of the Cosquer Cave is an important rock art find in an area of France where no Palaeolithic cave art had ever been discovered.

www.bradshawfoundation.com

Spoiler: Lewd

 

[Winot]

The Ring of Brodgar, Orkney, this afternoon:

View attachment 325095

My Dad's ashes are scattered there

Haven't been there myself but my Mum and him loved it there. One day I'll visit.

 

[Voley]

Enjoyed the sunset here tonight:



The Knap of Howar on remote Papa Westray in Orkney. The oldest preserved stone house in Northern Europe, I'm told. 5000+ years so in pretty good nick, considering. Lights up Newgrange/Maes Howe style in the dying sunlight.

This island's brilliant, quite apart from all that. Incredible wildlife, lovely beaches. On a similar latitude to Stavanger in Norway so as I write (at midnight) it's still light out there at the moment.

 

[bcuster]

Portrait of the Human as a Young Hominin

How the world looked when we were Australopithecus.

nautil.us

 

[A380]

Rollrights today.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Rollrights today.

View attachment 326827View attachment 326828View attachment 326829

I went to the Rollrights early one morning in the 1970's sometime. We sat in the middle of the stones and miraculously the morning mist hovered just on the outside of the ring. Talk about far out. We existed. The ring of stones existed, and beyond was nothing.

 

[friedaweed]

Enjoyed the sunset here tonight:

View attachment 325936View attachment 325937

The Knap of Howar on remote Papa Westray in Orkney. The oldest preserved stone house in Northern Europe, I'm told. 5000+ years so in pretty good nick, considering. Lights up Newgrange/Maes Howe style in the dying sunlight.

This island's brilliant, quite apart from all that. Incredible wildlife, lovely beaches. On a similar latitude to Stavanger in Norway so as I write (at midnight) it's still light out there at the moment.

Very jealous

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

HOME - La Roque Saint Christophe

www.roque-st-christophe.com

just visited this place today In the Dordogne. An immense site with occupation dug into the cliffs for thousands of years. Similar, though smaller, sites up and down the valley. Its heyday was in the Middle Ages, as a sanctuary from warfare, and barely lived in since then. Well worth a visit if you are ever down this way.

 

[ska invita]

i watch a lot of John Rogers walking videos - theyre mainly on London but I like it when he goes to the home counties
a few days ago he went to North Kent Downs to visitColdrum Long Barrow & the Lost Village of Dode
Long Barrow really old - 6,000 years old in fact -
have never set foot in that little area of Kent, going to do that soon
another ancient chalk ridgeway?

Went to Coldrum today, using tomorrows solstice as an excuse. there are some nice walks around there to be had also....

saw a sign about nearby Addington Long Barrow and The Chestnuts in Addington, i think maybe mentioned on the thread already...wasnt aware of these few sites though, just a little further, the other side of the medway:




...sadly seem to be intercut by a busy road but i will get over there...anyone else been there?

seems way too much a coincidence that these are all just off the pilgrims way - itself a prehistoric route supposedly

 

[ska invita]

wiki Pilgrims Way article says

The prehistoric trackway extended further than the present Way, providing a link from the narrowest part of the English Channel to the important religious complexes of Avebury and Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, where it is known as the Harroway. The way then existed as "broad and ill-defined corridors of movement up to half a mile wide" and not as a single, well-defined track.[7][8] The route was still followed as an artery for through traffic in Roman times, a period of continuous use of more than 3000 years.[2]

also

The course was dictated by the natural geography: it took advantage of the contours, avoided the sticky clay of the land below but also the thinner, overlying "clay with flints" of the summits.[4] In places a coexisting ridgeway and terrace way can be identified; the route followed would have varied with the season, but it would not drop below the upper line of cultivation.

 

[bcuster]

Frozen baby woolly mammoth remains found in Yukon Territory

The female mammoth calf has been named Nun cho ga, which means “big baby animal” in the Han language.

www.fox13memphis.com

 

[Elpenor]

I visited Pentre Ifan (thought to be a burial chamber) last Friday which is near Fishguard

5000 or so years old and according to the information panel, made of the same bluestone as Stonehenge. Unlike Stonehenge it was free and completely accessible to all as our heritage should be

 

[ska invita]

I visited Pentre Ifan (thought to be a burial chamber) last Friday which is near Fishguard

5000 or so years old and according to the information panel, made of the same bluestone as Stonehenge.

That bluestone original quarry is really near Fishguard - Carn Goedog - Preseli Hills
ETA: in fact its about 1 mile away from Pentre Ifan

 

[petee]

Tsunami: piecing together a Bronze Age tragedy in Turkey | The Past

Access to the sea can be a double-edged sword. Recent archaeological work at Çeşme in Turkey has revealed that its Bronze Age inhabitants learnt this lesson the hard way. Vasıf Şahoğlu and Beverly Goodman-Tchernov told Matthew Symonds how a natural disaster ushered in dramatic change, both at Çe ...

the-past.com

A little over 3,500 years ago, an emporium at Çeşme-Bağlararası, Turkey, had grown into a prosperous port of trade on the Aegean coast. But the fortunes of this settlement changed abruptly in the immediate aftermath of what may be the greatest natural disaster ever witnessed by humans. This unfolded when the volcano forming the ancient island of Thera – modern Santorini – erupted with sufficient force to leave a global fingerprint. Volcanic particles ejected into the atmosphere can be found in polar cores, while the cooling effect created by such material made its mark on tree growth rings in North America. Closer to Thera, ash carried by the wind carpeted sites lying hundreds of kilometres to the north and east. Çeşme-Bağlararası was among them. By the time this grey rain drifted down, though, its inhabitants had already felt the fury of the volcano. Recent archaeological work at the site has revealed that a tsunami slammed into the settlement. This was just the first in a series of calamities to befall its occupants, shedding poignant new light on the human cost of an eruption that transformed life in the Aegean.

 

[Voley]

I visited Pentre Ifan (thought to be a burial chamber) last Friday which is near Fishguard

5000 or so years old and according to the information panel, made of the same bluestone as Stonehenge. Unlike Stonehenge it was free and completely accessible to all as our heritage should be

View attachment 329276

Always wanted to see that one. Capstone always looks incredibly precarious to me.

 

[Voley]

That bluestone original quarry is really near Fishguard - Carn Goedog - Preseli Hills
ETA: in fact its about 1 mile away from Pentre Ifan

#GiveStonehengeBackToTheWelsh

 

[Elpenor]

Always wanted to see that one. Capstone always looks incredibly precarious to me.

It was rather special to be so close and a little scary to walk underneath it!

 

[Voley]

These are the top 20 Megalithic sites in Britain and Ireland according to Andy Burnham who runs the Megalithic Portal website mentioned in the OP.

I can only tick off 7 of them: Stonehenge, Avebury, Ring of Brodgar, Lanyon Quoit, Trevethy Quoit, the Stones of Stenness and the Mên-an-Tol.

My favs of the ones I've visited were Stenness / Ring of Brodgar in Orkney. Gets full-on otherworldly there when the sun goes down. Loved it.

 

[Elpenor]

That’s a nice list and something to work towards in your own time isn’t it

I went to Pentre Ifan this summer and will visit again next year - possibly for the solstice as I’m going to be on holiday nearby that week

 

[Storm Fox]

They seem to have put Avebury and Stonehenge in the wrong order.
Also Avebury to West Kennet Long Barrow and back makes a nice walk. Park at Avebury because there is just a layby at WKLB

 

[Voley]

They seem to have put Avebury and Stonehenge in the wrong order.

I'd have Ring of Brodgar / Stones of Stenness above both of them tbf. Just personal taste. Don't know why some get to you more than others but the ones that do stick with you forever.

We're up on Bodmin Moor looking for some more obscure megaliths this weekend. My other half's writing a book on the the moor's prehistory just now and there are a few lesser-known spots we need to check out.

 

[petee]

i've been to avebury and would gladly visit them all.

i have an avebury story: the gf won a Rockefeller to study roman stuff. we go around england and one place was avebury (i know well it's not roman, but she put it on the itinerary). we park, tour the place, come back, we've been broken into, her sporran with the money and i.d. is missing, we go to the police, who just days later find it in a ditch! the money is gone, but she got back her cherished sporran and the i.d. materials. turns out there was a spate of car break-ins around that time.

it was an eventful trip, and i liked that london alot. york was attractive too.