Wednesday 9th December

Foel Drygarn @ Alarmy

Probably the Preseli landscape is my most favourite place on this earth, the mind sinks into its peacefulness, the stark outcrops of rock, the supposed place from whence the bluestones of Stonehenge have come from.  The above photo came from the Country Diary feature in the Guardian.  He mentions Waldo Williams poetry, a poet who fought for this pristine landscape to remain free of military activities.

"The making so many conjectures at the reality, when they know they can but guess at it, and above all the insisting so long is but amusing themselves and us with a doubt, which perhaps lies the deeper for their search into it.” - See more at:  Geoffrey Grigson's magnificent summing up of the history of Stonehenge.

Today I have been reading Mike Pitt's article on the two quarries that might have supplied the bluestones.  My British Archaeology is an online edition, and as I read the excitement of digging for evidence is there in the article.  There are a lot of nay-sayers on  forums, forget them, they have never felt the exquisite thrill of land that holds its prehistory so sharply.  I have written of it many times, firstly wandering with Moss, then the climb with LS to the top of Foel Drygarn with the three great stone cairns on the top, and lastly with our American friends, who went in search of the hawthorn by a 'sacred' spring on Carn Meini but encountered a 'vertical swamp'!

Presceli Hills

Carn Meini