Our second hillwalk was to a five thousand year old Neolithic tomb. The weather was cool and wet again.The climb over the hill was a long one and I lagged behind all the others just like the first day. Luckily, there is another slow walker in the group. His name is Sean and he’s a retired member of the Irish Parliament from Dublin.
We started out at the Oideas Gael campus and took several back lanes to get to the road over the hill. It finally leveled out and then started downhill.
Once on the other side, we could see the tomb, or what’s left of it, on the other side of the road, in a bog.
Our guide, Tony, said this kind of tomb is called a court tomb. It has small antechambers and was rather large. There are spiral carved into some of the larger stones, but they are very hard to see, especially on a cloudy day. Archaeologists found burned and unburned bones inside, but can only speculate on what that means.
Further along the walk, he pointed out a collapsed dolmen in somebody’s sheep pasture and told us about an uncollapsed dolmen that a local farmer uses for a dog kennel. Why not? Dogs gotta have shelter, too.
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