Powers from the Past

07.08.2026

I started my day at Mizen Head enjoying a cliff top view of a clear blue sky over the vast Atlantic Ocean, then stopped at the beautiful Barley Cove Beach for a swim on my way east along County Cork’s southern coast. Past Schull and Roaringwater Bay I turned right in Skibbereen to find the Stone Row of Gurranes just outside Castletownhead. I pulled into a church car park with the unmistakable profile of Gurranes up on a ridge ahead. This was a site I was very excited to visit, being similar in alignment and character to Eighterua in Kerry, but much taller.

I crossed the road to find a sign on the field gate announcing ‘Private Land, Keep Out’ so carried on up the road in the hope I’d find a way over to the stones. Two more successive gates had the same sign and at the fourth gate I decided to hop over and take my chance. It was not the first time I had trespassed to get to a site. There was no livestock in the field and no crops growing so I took a direct route over to the ridge of gorse bushes and found my way up to the stone row.

I was initially struck by the power I felt from these three giant pillars. In an ever changing landscape they must have been a beacon of continuity and resilience for past generations. Up until the last few hundred years there were originally five stones here, with one fallen and the fifth removed to stand as an attraction at the Castletownhead Estate. Three slender stones remain with two reaching a height of fourteen feet, leaning back like the statue heads of Easter Island. I felt troubled by the missing trophy stone, and hoped that it would return to this ridge and be reunited in years to come.

I had had a very positive reaction to Gurranes and was bracing myself for hopefully, an even greater encounter with Drombeg Stone Circle, sixteen kilometers east.

I took the back road through Union Hall, then crossed the bridge over Glandore Harbour and found a small car park for the circle up a quiet country lane. A fenced footpath fringed with high ferns lead down to a wooden gate where the circle came into view.