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Pentre Ifan
Gwent, Wales

[Thursday - 05/06/99] Hiking St. David's Head left everyone a little too worn out to try and climb Foel Cwm-Cerwym where we had planned to see the two standing stones called Cerrig Meibon Arthur. Despite our fatigue, we still drove through the Preseli Mountains where the phase-one stones for Stonehenge were quarried and visited one last cromlech. Of course, we had to pass through Fishguard to get there and everyone thought about Lady Una from Aire Faucon which made us a bit homesick. Still, we had no trouble finding our last site of the day, Pentre Ifan.

Pentre Ifan constitutes one of the finest Bronze-Age burial chambers in Wales. dating from somewhere between 4,000 and 2,000 BC, it is over 3 meters high in places and dramatically placed on low-lying land near Newport. Local legends also refer to Pentre Ifan as another 'Arthur's Quoit,' thereby adding to the collection of stones bearing his name.

These stories probably all stem from stories about Arthur being a giant who through huge boulders throughout the countryside (a figure who vanished long ago from the literature of the Arthurian heroes). The stones of Pentre Ifan would once have been covered by an earth mound, beneath which the bones of the dead were laid.


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Last modified on Wednesday, November 26, 2008
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