www.carrowkeel.com (Carrowkeel Pages)
Magical, eerie, creepy, fabulous and inspiring! The Carrowkeel Passage Tombs are a number of cairns in the Bricklieve mountains that have been in use as burial places for thousands of years. They are around three to four thousand years old and there is a fair number of them along the ridges of this area (Cairns ‘A’ through to ‘P’ in fact). We visited the site of Cairns ‘G’, ‘H’ and ‘K’ which are some of the best preserved and relatively easy to access (park in what could be very loosely called a car park - a muddy patch where another car was - and walk about a kilometre up the hill to the site past lots of sheep). Unlike a lot of these places, you can go inside these tombs but you need to slide in on your stomach through the narrow entrance passageway and then stand up in the burial chamber inside….how morbid does that sound!

But it was wonderful. The whole hill top is almost silent except for the wind. There are no city sounds, no huge crowds and the most glorious view over to the cairns on the other ridges and down into the valley. It’s difficult to describe how it felt to be standing inside such a intimate piece of pre-history. Sliding through such a narrow opening and then being able to stand up comfortably inside was amazing. These tombs had been cleaned out in the early 1900’s so there is nothing left but the rock structure itself. Don’t worry, we weren’t clambering over thousand year old bones and artefacts! And we certainly didn’t damage or remove anything from the site! Unlike the first excavator, a fairly destructive treasure seeker called Macalister, who, in 1911 used dynamite to open up Cairn ‘G’, we tried to respect the heritage!

Seek this place out and follow the deceptive signage along the road. It’s absolutely fascinating and will leave a profound impression behind.