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This was perhaps the last of today's long cairns, barring Arthur's stone, and it may just perhaps have been the least as well. But it is still well worth the minimal effort involved in getting here. Getting here involves a few minor roads, but having a sweetcheat to do the navigating helps a lot. Dubious parking for one by the gate/stile and its just a few yards to the long cairn. Simples.
The cairn itself is fairly ruinous but the chamber is a good one and pays for itself. Other stones protrude from the ruined cairn, one in particular looks to have been part of a cist or small chamber. One of the longer side stones in the chamber has a squarish hole at the bottom which I feel could have served some function.
A very nice place to sit and ponder and while away some loose time.
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Across the road from Little Lodge long cairn, over a gate, and five minutes of an uphill saunter brings us to this pretty good round barrow. Only a fence or two separate us now, after deftly jumping them we can see that the barrow is really quite a long one, not very round at all.
Slumped next to the barrow is a load of loose stony rubble, and more further down on the side of the barrow.
Excepting from north to east there are very good long views. Little lodge can be seen in the valley below. Two farmery type people eyeballed us before we went up but nothing came from it. Sunny silence abounded.
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A lovely place is this.
The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the horses ignored us, and with not one stone hunting buddy but two, this was getting to be a good day out. We parked at Little Lodge farm and strolled over to the long cairn unhindered by livestock or their human captors.
More Hawthorn trees, with Mistletoe, never seen mistletoe before, except at parties, and that could have been plastic.
It was a bit of an anti climax, as we'd just been to the sleeping giant of Penyrwrlod, and the two corkers at Ffostyll, today was a day of Black Mountain long cairns, six in all, this one was number four. Even though Little Lodge is not as big or as cool as the last two it does have some charm, and enough interesting features to keep one occupied for at least a couple of hours.
The chamber at the south end is still complete, minus it's capstone. There is a large long stone under the Hawthorn tree, it could be a blocking stone. Just twenty yards further south and the ground falls steeply down to a wee brook that is fed by at least two nearby springs.
Across the road and up the hill is a fairly good round barrow called Coed-y-Polyn (nice one Alken) it has good views of the surrounding fields and of the high hills of the Black Mountains and with Little Lodge Long cairn in it's place among it all
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How does something this size escape attention for so long, hidden in plain view, yet not "discovered " until 1972.
We unknowingly followed Elderfords directions, and parked right outside the Penywyrlod farmhouse, hoping to grab a bit of easy parking courtesy of the obliging farm owner, we were blessed indeed, the farm was empty, unoccupied, gone away, as we say at work.
With no one about we made our unhurried and unhindered way over to the long cairn.
It was our first site of the day, a list of Black mountain chambered long cairns fortuitously never far from a road, which was a world of comfort to Simon, our new field wandering friend, who had knee issues. It was so much bigger than we anticipated, much much bigger, and the terrible road building scar where they'd dragged off tonnes of cairn material and almost all the chamber stones, broken up like so much peanut brittle, sandstone isn't a very durable stone at the best of times.
Three large stones are to be seen at the rear ? one is poking out of the cairn, the other two are having a lie down, another large flat stone resides by the front north side. Elderford seems to know what all the stones are, but it's a bit of a confusion and so much is gone that I find it a struggle to believe anything can be said for certain.
But there are some certainties, it is a giant of a cairn, with a giant fatal wound, but in a beautiful place with cracking views, it is a nice place to lay down and die, for a cairn.
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I dont know the right name for this fort it could as easily be Ewloe fort, but ive name it after the river that runs by and the parkland it is in.
High above the Wepra brook, in deep woodland on a sandstone promontory is this little fort. It is only about 30m x 10m. There isn't much in the way of surviving defences either, just a few meters of a ditch separating the promontory to the rest of the high ground, now a golf course. But I can well imagine the place with less trees high above the place where two water courses meet, being a good place to live.
Nowadays the place is Wepra park, with nicely stepped paths all the way along the brook to the much better known Ewloe castle. Today there were many people about, from picnicing families to groups of lads.
Not a decent fort , but a very nice place.
Ps , not really suited to boys with bikes.
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After visiting over a thousand ancient places and driving between fifteen to twenty thousand miles every year I can only conclude that I'm obsessed with these places, and finding this website seven years ago only compounded that obsession, at least I'm not alone anymore.
My favourite places are:
Ring of Brodgar
Callanish
Balnauran of Clava
Torhouskie
Swinside
Nine stones close
Bryn Celli Ddu
The Druids circle (penmaenmawr)
HafodyGors Wen
Gwal y Filiast
Grey Wethers
Boscawen Un
La Roche au Fees
Drombeg
Uragh
Talati De Dalt
and these are only the ones that immediatly spring to mind, so many stones and not enough lifetimes.
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