When I pulled up in the car at the church car park my heart gave a little leap. These stones are perched on one side of a little valley and the car park is at the lower end of this, so the stones stand proud upon the ridge top. A startling sight.
There are three hugely tall stones here now. The smallest is a whopping 2.4m tall, the tallest is 4.2m !!! They are each tall, skinny stones, which are evenly spaced and inserted into cracks in the bedrock.
A fourth stone lies broken nearby and a fifth stone that was once here was moved to the Somerville Estate in Castletownsend.
As I walked up to them there was a congregation of bullocks by the stones. One of them payed particular attention to my approach, but trotted off when I made various 'Gerroutofit' type noises. However, lurking in their midst was a bull, who eventually decided that I'd been there too long and charged straight at me. I am so happy that no one had a video camera nearby to capture me scrambling up and over a rocky outcrop at a fair old rate of knots.
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. |