A Mile From the Stars

What makes the sky here more than just dark is what sits a mile up the road.

 

On the slope of Maughanaclea Hill stands the Kealkill Stone Circle: five low stones, two tall standing stones, and a small cairn, raised in the Bronze Age around four thousand years
ago.

 

It is one of the finest examples of its kind in the south west, set high with long views over Bantry Bay.

 

The people who built it watched this sky closely, season after season, and set their stones towards the turning points of the sun and moon.

 

They read the year in the sky because their lives depended on it: when to plant, when to gather, when the dark half of the year would loosen and the light return.

 

The same stars wheel over that circle tonight as wheeled over it then. The patterns have barely changed in four thousand years.

 

We encourage guests to walk up to the circle during their stay, then come back and lie in the dome under the same stars, or take it the other way round.

 

It is a short walk and a long view, and it is the thing that makes this sky belong to this valley and nowhere else.

Plan Your Walk