Visiting the Giant's Grave at Melcombe Bingham

Dorset this week - selected mainly as the weather maps showed this as being the nearest location that was expected to have only light rain rather than a deluge. Yes the fabulous British summer weather returns...

More precisely  Melcombe Bingham and the Giants Grave. This was a walk of two parts - the first a quick run up the hill to find the pillow mound and "gravestone" and a second longer walk starting in the village but going in a completely different direction.

So first the Giant's Grave. This is the "headstone" at the end of a long low pillow mound ( medieval, not prehistoric  but constructed to provide a home for rabbits and a cheap source of meat). To be honest the mound is very hard to see so I am more or less taking this on trust.

Not the most exciting of menhirs but nevertheless it has a quaint story attached. The giant in question lost a stone throwing contest with a neighbouring giant and died of disappointment!




So back to the centre of the village and a steep climb up the other side of the valley. Spring has been very late this year so the path sides were thick with both spring and early summer flowers. Red and white campion. cowslips, primroses, vetch, violets and many more.

The wind and rain had set in by now and it was very exposed at the top of the ridge. The views would have been fabulous if we'd been able to see anything but low lying grey cloud. Oh well.

We could see the ditches and lines of the barrows at the top - this is taken looking along the top of one of them.

Coming down from the top it was a lot pleasanter being sheltered from the wind  and we carried on to find the Dorsetshire Gap

This was quite magical. A mysterious meeting of 5 trackways which cut deeply into the landscape. This was the hub of Dorset from medieval times to the 19CE.





All around is evidence of    of prehistoric and medieval settlement: hilltop cross dykes, barrows and an incomplete iron age fort.

I could have stayed here a lot longer than we did but it was time to take the upper track and start to head back to the car.

Stopping of course to admire the bluebells in the wood and to pick some of the wild garlic which was everywhere.







 What goes down though must come up and there was a short climb back up on to the exposed ridge to enjoy the wind and rain again... 

Still we were rewarded by the sight of a dew pond which made the climb almost bearable. I was glad though to drop down into the valley again and take the farm track along the bottom back to the car.

 

Down in Nemphett Trubwell

 If you find life a race, you just can't stand the pace,
Come with me to the West Country - the perfect hiding place:
Pack your bags, and make your way to Somerset, and I will lay Ten to one you'll wanna stay down in Nempnett Thrubwell


Well with a name like that who can resist Nemphett Thrubwell? Especially with a barrow nearby called Fairy Toot! The name is evocative and it's said to be the haunt of fairies and goblins. Not that there were any in evidence today. If they had any sense they were all somewhere much warmer...

The Fairy Toot is extremely badly damaged and no virtually unfindable ( I'm reasonably confident but not 100%) that this is it. Originally it was a large chambered longbarrow but its just a low mound now with some ash trees on the top of it.


There were snow flurries beating down so we beat a hasty retreat and on to Felton Common. A quick dash across the top of the common down into Felton for some lunch and then a more leisurely re-ascent on to the common.

This is now a nature reserve but it's too early in the year for much to be seen.

There are large rocks scattered about, many buried in the undergrowth and an unusual pair of linked bowl barrows both surrounded by ditches.







Some of the locals were about  - including this rather cold looking buzzard who was kind enough to pose nicely for me








Back down now and headed for home via the famed Nempnett Thrubwell.  The village, such as it is, is just a collection of farms and houses spread over a maze of minor roads and an evocatively named "Awkward Lane"! 

 The church is above the rest of the village and I'm just glad we didn't meet any traffic coming the other way... Couldn't go in as the building was locked.

A bit of a let down really - no frogs as big  as dogs or pigs doing Irish jigs to be seen! Or at least not today!

In search of more holey stones..

Well the snow has gone, to be replaced by high winds and thunderstorms. I'm not sure which is worse. After a fairly wild night, the morning dawned with high winds and blue skies. Could have been worse.

I'm on a theme here and another holey stone was on the agenda - this time the Long Stone at Minchinhampton.

For a change, this one should have been easy to find but we still managed to drive past it the first time....

Yes fairly obvious from the road isn't it! Never mind. We found somewhere to pull off the road and walked back to find it.

Access is very easy - there is a gate but as the wall is currently being rebuilt it wasn't really necessary. There are 3 holes in this stone, and it has the usual healing legends attached to it. Passing children through the holes was said to cure rickets. They'd have to be very small children, there is just about enough room to pass an adult hand through - may be just inserting the affected limbs through the holes would be enough?

This is another stone that is said to get up and wander around. When the clock strikes midnight, this one gets up and heads for Minchinhampton spring for a drink.


There is a second stone a few feet away

This one has actually been built into the dry stone wall. So is this the remains of a burial chamber? A circle? or just some standing stones. There are barrows all over the place so it seems that the area was in ritual use at some time.




Speaking of barrows, there was one just across the road so it seemed sensible to go and try and find it. This proved equally easy to find. A most unusual day!

Sadly it is badly damaged with most of the middle now missing. It's also fenced off with the green tape and we didn't approach too closely as it is on private land.

I think you can just about see some of the stones here but without clambering all over the barrow it is hard to be sure. Reports on the condition of the chambers are very mixed, from being present and correct to not being there at all anymore. Sadly I am not able to say one way or the other

Wanders in Wales - Even more dogs!

Last day and we are heading home - seemed a shame though not to take it gently and see what we could spot on the way. Approaching Barmouth  Cerrig Arthur appeared on the map. It looked reasonably close to the road and as all the walking gear was packed this was definitely a point in its favour. The road was narrow. Very narrow and very short of passing places. Mercifully we didn't meet anything as we wended our way up the mountain to the end of the line where there was plenty of room to park.

Hardly had we done so when a transit van appeared, followed quickly by another and a whole string of cars. Our remote deserted spot was suddenly busier than Piccadilly Circus. The mystery was soon revealed. The locals had arrived to exercise their dogs!

Very nice friendly people they guided us to our very destination and we spent some time chatting to them. Time very well spent as it happens as they mentioned a burial chamber nearby that we should visit... so we did. Back to the circle first though. Three conspicuous stones surrounded by others that may or may not be part of the circle.  In the background stands Cader Idris, claimed to be Arthur's seat.

Time to inch back down, again praying we didn't meet anything!  Lunch and then back to Dyffryn Ardudwy. This was another mind blowing location. Just off the busy main road it could have been in the middle of nowhere surrounded by mature oak trees and a thick carpet of acorns ( one or two of which just might have come home with me!)

Originally a stone covered mound  it now survives as two well preserved dolmens, one of which has some strange carved lines on one of the uprights.

An unexpected Cat Hole

IT housekeeping all done - so plenty of space for lots more pictures! This week's blog was intended to be a couple of castles but a trip out on Monday led to Parc Cwm in the Gower and on to  the Cathole cave.

 The cave is well hidden but some kind soul left a clue..... The (fairly well trodden) earth path leaves the main tarmac park through Parc Cwm and disappears into the trees and undergrowth.






A second leaf arrow indicated the even more well hidden path to the right which leads to the cave. The cave entrance forms a narrow cleft, wider at the base, which goes deep into the rock.

It is (of course) pitch dark in there and not having planned this find I was lacking a torch. However the camera flash came to the rescue, disclosing an intriguing interior with some dark passages leading even further back. There were a couple of bays, both seem to have passages.

The cave is well known for Late Glacial finds ( approx 10,000BCE). Some finds may be even earlier - 26000BCE. The cave appears to have been inhabited by  a variety of creatures, red fox, arctic fox and brown bear.  Other animal finds include   mammoth, woolly rhino, red deer and giant deer.

Later in it's history the cave was used by Mesolithic hunters and later still by Bronze Age peoples who left remains of burial urns. Personally I'd have found those dark passageways behind me very unnerving!

As I mentioned, the visit to the cave was unplanned ( didn't even know it was there) but it overshadowed the intended objective - the Parc le Breos  long barrow which was rather an anti- climax. Heavily restored it is a chambered long barrow dating from around 3800BCE.

Some 40 human remains were found within, some of which appeared to be excarnated, some not. It does seem possible that the rituals surrounding the burials may have incorporated the use of the cave. This theory is strengthened by the discovery of late  ice age animal bones - gathered up with the exposed human remains from the cave perhaps?

Uffing and Puffing at Uffingham White Horse!

Yet another wet Sunday- I can see a theme developing for Summer 2011! The white horse at Uffingham has long been on my list of places to visit. This is the oldest chalk cut figure in the UK and has been dated as approximately 3000 years old. The hill below with a flat top, Dragon Hill has legendary associations with St George and is said to be where he killed the famous dragon (!).

The car park is below the horse so it is a medium  climb up the hill to get close. The horse itself is very hard to photograph. There are no spots where the whole horse can be seen so you need to take aerial shots.

That's a bit out of budget for me so follow this link to the National Trust page which has some lovely pictures as well as some details on Dragon Hill which it seems I completely neglected to photograph despite climbing down to it and the horrible long steep climb back up!

 Directly above the horse is the remains of the Uffingham Castle, a large iron age fort.

 This is the highest point in Oxfordshire and we had some fabulous views of the rain storms heading our way. At least it gave us the chance to see what was coming.







 Dodging the raindrops we walked along the Ridgeway, a chalk by way leading to Wayland's Smithy. This is a long barrow in which the  remains of 14 people were found. The burials have been carbon dated to between   3590-3550 BCE which is a very short period of time.

The barrow is actually two, a later and much larger barrow was built on top and this is what we can see today. The white horse had been busy but we had the barrow more or less to ourselves other than for a couple of people trying to track down a reported crop circle near by. I hadn't been looking out for one so wasn't able to help.

There are many legends associated with the barrow.  The name Wayland is said to derive from Wolund, a Germanic smith and metal working God.

This  name was bestowed on the site by the Saxons about a 1000 years after it was built and subsequent foklore has it that if a traveller's horse loses a shoe he should leave the horse ovrnight at the Smithy along with a silver coin. In the morning the horse will be shod and the coin gone. Whether this tale is based on a still older folk memory of rituals and offerings at the site can only be the subject of conjecture but is interesting food for thought.

It is a truly lovely setting. Although it is surrounded by farmland it is enclosed by mature trees which lend it a secluded and peaceful air. Well worth a visit.