Country diary: What sights were seen from this magnificent cairn? | Jim Perrin

Mochras, Gwynedd: This is a dramatic spot, and the nearby abundance of dog-whelk perhaps gives a clue as to what commerce thrived hereIf ever you've splashed and slogged your way to Bryn Cader Faner, the finest bronze age monument in Britain according to the archaeologist Frances Lynch, then as you were sitting in the ring cairn with its corona of out-facing stone spears, you may have wondered, like me, what commerce travelled along the adjacent ancient trackway two millennia ago? It wouldn't have involved heavy goods, that's for sure.The track threads its way through the northern Rhinogydd, the roughest of hills in Eryri, and perhaps by way of Afon Dyfrdwy, before heading for the English shires. Its starting point is Mochras - "Shell Island", with its popular campsite on the holiday coast of Ardudwy. Shell middens (heaps of discarded shells) there provide evidence of occupation that was perhaps contemporaneous with the construction of this great cairn at some unknown date. That's not cut and dried though - the size of some shell middens attributed to Neolithic man suggest they may have been in use over great swathes of history, not just this moment in time. Continue reading...