Ancient circles and King Arthur’s Tintagel Castle

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Tuesday 29.12.2009 Day 75
Ancient circles and King Arthur’s Tintagel Castle

We got up and had a fantastic cooked English bfast and then went off to explore the ancient sites. We tried to find a 3500 BC burial mound called Tregeseal Chambered Cairnand even though we punched a book on Ancient sites in the area we could not find it. There was small stone on the side of the road saying to report people vandalising or leaving sacrificed at the site to report them. No sign to say what the site was. We when to look for it but there was a fork in the road and we took one way and it was not down there so we when the other way and there where posts with arrows on it that we followed but still could not find the site it was raining and we were walking in the moors and there was so much water we could not go on. We then went and found the Ballowall Barrow this is a large chamber cairn 11 meters diameter and 3 meters high which dates from the Neolithic period approx 3500 BC and consists of a large central dome now unroofed, side cist chambers and a small entrance grave on the west side overlooking the sea. Burial remains and urns were found in the cist chambers when the site was excavated in 1878, so it was evidently an important burial site of Neolithic ancestors. Legends speak of little people (fairies) dancing around the barrow on moonlit nights, perhaps a memory of the spirits of the dead.
We then went back to St Just to the Plain-an-Gwarry or Playing Place an amphitheatre that lies behind the clock tower. There were originally six rows of seats cut into the banks, from where people would watch the Cornish miracle plays. It is still used today. We then got some Cornish pasties for lunch and they were very nice. We then went to the Merry Maidens marked by a stone that did not say what it was if you do not know what you where looking for you would not find it. It is a well preserved circle of 19 stones with only 3 having to be re erected. It has been dated back to 2400 BC. We saw a lot of standing stones in the roads leading two and from the site. We then drove to Tintagel the site of King Arthur birth place. We stayed the night in a B&B overlooking the castle.

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