🍁Susan & Hugh

Upon arriving in Ireland, we purchased a joint OPW membership (just under $100 CAD). However, tickets for Brú na Bóinne, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were booked out until September. We decided to return at the end of our Irish adventures to check out the prehistoric passage tombs of Knowth, Newgrange, and Dowth.

These tombs are older than both the Pyramids of Giza and Stonehenge and were built by Stone Age farmers along the River Boyne more than 5,200 years ago.

Newgrange, the star of the show, is a mammoth 85 metres across and 13 metres high, with 97 surviving kerbstones. The inner passage is 19 metres long and leads to a main chamber that branches off into three smaller chambers. The beautiful corbelled roof has remained intact, keeping the tomb watertight all this time.

The special roof box at the entrance is aligned with the Winter Solstice, allowing a narrow beam of sunlight to illuminate the inner chamber at sunrise from December 19–23. Our tour entered the tomb, and we shuffled along the cramped passageway into the inner chamber, where our guide turned off the lights and used a flashlight to show us what the beam of sunlight would look like during the Solstice.

No pictures are permitted inside the tomb, but it was incredible and something we won’t soon forget.

The carvings on many of the kerbstones—spirals, zigzags, and lozenges—are some of the finest examples of Neolithic megalithic art. We also wandered around the outside of Knowth, a site with one large mound, 18 smaller ones surrounding it, and 127 massive kerbstones, many of which are adorned with even more art.

The whole area was so beautiful that it makes you think location, location, location is not a new platitude. We had to wait a month, but it was worth it. #brunaboinne #newgrange #overlandtravel #ireland #neolithic