Autumn Equinox 2011

Castro de San Cibrán de Lás, Ourense

At the same time that Raye and Dave were looking at hill-forts in Bakewell, the Spanglish section of the team were up in the hills near Ourense, checking out a fantastic hill-fort of our own. This castro is on the brow of a hill (as always), but with a circular wall around it of immense proportion. Further up the hill is a smaller circle of an inner compound, and between the two are hundreds of round houses, like a honeycomb.

As we walked on the top, I helped Malusa jump down off a large rock, and I noticed that the floor beneath her made a hollow echo. I stomped around a bit, and Loreto agreed that it sounded like the whole hill was hollow.

Castromao

We also visited a second hill-fort, which looks like a more compact version of the one mentioned above, on a steeper incline, although this one is in a worse state of repair. It looks as though some archaelogical work on it has been abandoned (maybe they ran out of funds), because a lot of it is badly over-run. I had to climb over a fence to get the top, and stomped around again, but the grass and weeds were too thick to get a good idea of whether it was also hollow.