Ancient Ireland: The Boyne Valley and the Passage Tombs

Editor's note

Two nights at Rock Farm outside Slane, about 4km from the tombs. Brú na Bóinne holds at least ninety monuments in the bend of the river and has been a World Heritage Site since 1993. Newgrange and Knowth are reached only by shuttle bus and guided tour from the visitor centre; Newgrange dates from about 3100 BC, faced in white quartz, with the roofbox that lights its chamber at the winter solstice, and Knowth has two passages, seventeen satellite tombs and the largest assemblage of megalithic art in Europe. Dowth, the third great tomb, is free, unticketed and usually empty, its top still cratered by a botched excavation of 1847. Above them stands the Hill of Slane, where Muirchú's seventh-century Life has Patrick lighting a fire in 433 against the High King's orders. The story only works because Tara is visible 16km to the south.

Editor's note

One night at Collon, a few kilometres from Monasterboice. The valley did not stop mattering when the tombs were finished. Muiredach's High Cross stands 5.5 metres high beside a round tower of 28 metres, and is generally reckoned the finest high cross in Ireland. Mellifont, close by, was the first Cistercian abbey in the country, founded in 1142 at the instigation of St Malachy to bring continental monasticism to Ireland. And at Oldbridge on 1 July 1690, William III beat James II on the river; the visitor centre there covers the battle that settled who would wear the English crown. Three sets of ruins, a few kilometres and several centuries apart.

Editor's note

Two nights at Rathbeggan, with Tara and Trim either side. On the Hill of Tara the Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny, stands on the Inauguration Mound, where the kings of Tara were said to be crowned until about AD 500. A few steps away is the Mound of the Hostages, a passage tomb built between 3350 and 2800 BC in the same style as Newgrange, holding an estimated 250 to 500 people and lined up on the sunrise at Samhain and Imbolc. Meath was also the ground the Normans had to hold in order to hold Dublin: Trim Castle, begun by Hugh de Lacy in 1176, is the largest Anglo-Norman castle in Ireland and the keep is only entered on the guided tour, with Bective Abbey roofless on the Boyne nearby and the Yellow Steeple across the river.

Editor's note

One night at the Loughcrew Megalithic Centre, about 5km from the cairns. Loughcrew spreads passage tombs over four hilltops and they are around 5,000 years old, contemporary with the Boyne but with no visitor centre and no crowds. In 1980 Martin Brennan worked out that Cairn T on Carnbane East is aligned on the equinox sunrise: the light runs down the passage onto the carved backstone, the same trick as Newgrange but twice a year. The interior is closed for conservation, so people gather outside at dawn in late March and late September. West at Fore, seven miraculous impossibilities are attributed to the seventh-century St Féichín, including a monastery built on a bog and a stream that appears to run uphill, linked by a 3km loop through 1,400 years of monastic history.