Finally March Begins With Rainbow Chasing

It's been a funny month. The first weekend of March I wasn't very well. Last weekend I was at Materialitas at UCD, a conference on the materiality of stone in monuments. This was a great weekend with some very interesting speakers including Irish archaeological legends Muiris O'Sullivan and George Eogan (who excavated Knowth amongst others). Elizabeth Twohig was there too along with Gabriel Cooney. One of the presentations was about the Iberian slate tablets that have been found in their hundreds. For more info on these see Esprit.

Today I decided to leave the madness of Dublin on ST. Patrick's Day and head out of town. I had planned to spend two days in Kerry, but the weather forecast is terrible. Today it looked ok. It wasn't. I got soaked!

I headed for Cavan, in particular the sites around Burren townland. I have been to many of the Burren TD sites before, but I had recently seen some photos from Andy Ryan showing that there is now a signposted trail in th woods. This is marvellous, pointing out all the things of interest: Medieval enclosures, a promontory fort, wedge tombs, a portal tomb, loads of hut sites, a boulder burial and none monumental stuff like glacial eratics. Although the sites are signposted there are no information boards, but the addition of the signs is to be applauded. Due to the lack of information boards I don't know if the rock art I found is a new find or not.

I managed to find a couple remote sites just over the Fermanagh border. Getting to the first of these took me across some exposed peat bog in driving rain. I'd come this far and wasn't turning back! As I walked to the site I was chasing a rainbow across the hilltop. It was just 100m across and never much further in front of me than 100m or so. I really felt as if I was going to walk under it (which is obviously impossible, but it was a nice thought.)

I have used my not-going-out-time well, though. I have started to rewrite the whole of megalithomania.com. I will be relaunching it within the next two weeks. I am finding sections and features that I forgot I had! No wonder that some people email me to suggest I do something I already do. The new look will be far more simple and less overpowering and cluttered. It won't be quite so gaudy either. Pages will load quicker, too (I hope).