Mountdrum - Court Tomb | Mountdrum - Wedge Tomb |
Mountdrum - Stone Circle | Mountdrum - Stone Circle |
Mountdrum - Stone Circle | Mountdrum - Wedge Tomb |
I first heard of this place a couple of years or so ago and it's taken me this long to return to the area. The complex consists of a group of Beaghmore (County Tyrone) type stone circles and associated rows, and several tombs.
There is good parking at the heart of the site and the information boards are pretty good. As the tombs are not in too good a condition they have used pictures of other (better) sites to illustrate them. I'm not sure if the plan of Ballyedmonduff (County Dublin) is really a 'typical wedge tomb ', however.
The main board by the car park shows a couple of paths that aren't in place yet, making two of the monuments a bit difficult to locate.
I could tell that someone had recently cleared some of the monuments of their gorse covering, as there were big piles of the stuff close by. All-in-all it's a well-signed, well-maintained site and worth stopping at if you're close by. Unfortunately there are no signs pointing to the site on the roads and, amazingly, there isn't even a sign pointing up the track that leads to the car park!
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This is an explanation of (and a bit of a disclaimer for) the coordinates I provide. Where a GPS figure is given this is the master for all other coordinates. According to my Garmin these are quite accurate. Where there is no GPS figure the 6 figure grid reference is master for the others. This may not be very accurate as it could have come from the OS maps and could have been read by eye. Consequently, all other cordinates are going to have inaccuracies. The calculation of Longitude and Latitude uses an algorithm that is not 100% accurate. The long/lat figures are used as a basis for calculating the UTM & ITM coordinates. Consequently, UTM & ITM coordinates are slightly out. UTM is a global coordinate system - Universal Transverse Mercator - that is at the core of the GPS system. ITM is the new coordinate system - Irish Transverse Mercator - that is more accurate and more GPS friendly than the Irish Grid Reference system. This will be used on the next generation of Irish OS maps. |