Pentre Ifan burial chamber, Pembrokeshire, Wales

Pentre Ifan - which translates as 'Ivan's village' is an ancient burial chamber. It was built somewhere around 6000 years ago. All that remains now are the large stones, but once there was an earth mound covering the whole thing.


These stones are large - you can walk under the cap stone without any difficulty. It's been estimated that the capstone weighs somewhere between 16 and 40 tons. It makes you wonder how the people who built this moved the stones here? And why?


What were the ceremonies to do with burial that were so important to them that they took the immense effort and time to buid this, and other, burial chambers for their dead?


The site of this burial chamber is fabulous. It overlooks the coast near Fishguard, Pemmbrokeshire, and there are other burial chambers nearby, as well as a reconstructed Iron Age viillage, Castell Henllys.

Between Brecon & Sennybridge, Wales, UK

On New Year's day, we had a rare event in south west Powys - we had a severe air frost. It had been dry, and although the ground wasn't all frosted, the winter trees and bushes looked stunning We went for a walk and took some photos, which I have finally gotten around to sharing. This picture of a very white world was taken near Llanspyddid, about 2 miles from home:



and here's a close up of some Rosebay willowherb:


and some cow parsley:

and some ferns:


We drove a mile or two further to Cwm Camlais and found some lovely frosted conifers:


and an extremely friendly robin:





and quite a friendly horse:





We found some beautiful iced spiders webs:



and icy branches in the hedges:









and the frost even made the wire fencing look pretty!



but this is my favourite scene of the day:

with this close up looking almost as good: