The weather was terrible today - so unpredictable. One moment it was raining heavily and the next it was sunny. Driving around doesn't help because sometimes you can be moving with or into the rain. On days like this I find it's best to plan visits to roadside monuments - it's not much fun being stuck on top of a hill when the rain comes down.

As I've mentioned quite often recently, I have tended to go to the big counties over the years and I need to spend some time in the 'lesser' counties megalithically speaking. Today it was Offaly's turn.

There aren't a lot of places in Offaly with the dramatic impact of a portal tomb, but it does have a lot barrows and, and this is where I get really interested, bullaun stones. I am now approaching 2000 monuments on megalithomania. I've been to more than that over the last 7+ years, but combining some of them into one site in the early days means that number-wise there are less than 2000.

I had planned my route today to take me to a bullaun stone for site 2000, but I think the rain stopped me one short: I'll see when I look at my notes later. I may have unwittingly made it to 2000 sites on megalithomania. If I have done so, then the 2000 site is a pretty uninspiring bullaun stone. If I haven't made it to 2000 I will target something really special for my first site on the next trip.

Todat Ken Williams and I climbed up Baltinglass Hill. The last time I went I swore it would be the last time. I'd looked for the carvings up there and found nothing, so I had no reason whatsoever to climb up there again. Then, Ken rings me and says that he'd been told that several of the kerb stones have carvings on them too - do I fancy going up. Oh no ... here we go again.

After my lungs nearly collapsed at several points on the climb (I really must give up smoking!) we reached the top and once again I was at this magnificent monument. The climb up is getting harder, because the band of gorse bushes on the west slopes is now of fairy tale thickness proportions. Anyone would think that there is a princess sleeping in a tower up there! Sadly we didn't find the carvings on the kerbstones even with a printout of Walshes plan in hand.

However, we did manage to get some photographs of the spirals on the orthostats of the one tomb. These are not visible to the naked eye, but can be seen with side flash. The problem with this is that you need to know which orthostats the carvings are on. Luckily for us the plan had these stones marked.

Ken was very impressed with the site, and rightly so. It's a great place and one of the county's real gems. This said, I still don't think I'll be back up there again in a hurry.