The reason there has been no blog for two weeks is because two weekends ago I was in Germany visiting a friend and last weekend I was in Manchester to see Julian Cope in concert. The Manchester trip did not involve any stones, but I did get to two sites in Germany. I will add these to the Beyond Our Shores section shortly.

During the week I also added a write up of my visit to Cabeza del Plomo, a Neolithic village in Spain, to the Beyond Our Shores.

This week I went to the area around the Waterford and Kilkenny border that I refer to as Portal Tomb Central. There are around 10 portal tombs within a 15 mile radius. Unfortunately I wasn't there to visit them all, but perhaps I'll do that another day. I did make it to one I hadn't seen before though. As well as that I finally made it to Killbunny church - what a great name! - couldn't help thinking of Glen Close.

The main purpose of the trip was to revisit Leac na Scail (County Kilkenny). Recently I saw some photos of it without the mass of bushes obscurring the rear end of the monument, so I had to make the visit.

First of all I have to thank Nonsuch Publishing for agreeing to publish my first book - Monu-mental About Prehistoric Dublin - which is unsurprisingly a fieldguide to the prehistoric monments of county Dublin. It should be available in Autumn 2006. Keep checking www.monu-mental.com for more details.

Obviously, most of my time in the coming months will be dedicated to getting Monu-mental About Prehistoric Dublin finalised and reading for printing, so I don't think I'll be getting out much around the rest of the country for a while. It does allow me the opportunity to revisit a lot of Dublin sites again.

There are several sites that I have been meaning to get to for a long timw now. One of these was a suspected (fallen) standing stone in Ballinteer that I have driven past many times. Sadly I will never get the chance to look at it now, because the field has been bulldozed to make way for a new development. What cost our heritage?

The second may well seem a little disappointing when you see the pictures (you can see nothing of the overgrown monument in them), but there is still good reason to make sure its position does not become lost as it may be the key to a lot of the monuments around it.

The third one is a cist in the townland Lugmore on the top of Tallaght Hill. This is a gem!

Whilst heading back to the car from this site I took a spontaneous detour and discovered an unrecorded (possible) stone circle. How good a day is that!?

A long time ago I saw a stone row marked on the map just outside Cavan and marked it as a site to visit one day. At some point I was informed that it was in the middle of a pine plantation, so I put visiting it out of my mind until a day when I was close by. Since then the trees have been felled and the views have now opened up. A visit was back on the cards and that's exactly what I did.

But! What else should I visit while I'm in Cavan. A quick look at the map made me realise that there was a whole heap of stuff around Killycluggan that I'd never been to, including the replica of the Killycluggan Stone itself. That was settled then. That would be my day and if I had time I would whizz a bit further up county Cavan and seek out a few sweathouses too. Unfortunately, it started to rain mid afternoon and I decided to call it a day and head home, but not without seeing some lovely stuff.