The Tara Skryne Valley on Sunday

Monday May 24, 2010 12:56

by farrelly57 - Private

A walk in the valley

Here is the TSV on Sunday. We are told that destruction will not happen in this valley anymore, we are told that our heritage is safe but my walk yesterday shows that things have simply got worse.
Please become involved and stop the rape of our old green land. It is reaching appoint that soon it will be too late. We look set to lose all our old mysterious, wild and fallow places.

Standing Stone

Here are some pictures I took on my walk through the Tara/Skryne Valley yesterday.
The planting on the M3 verges seems in many places to be almost monoculture; the planting of Hazel only and I wonder why they did not put in Whitethorn, Crab Apple, Blackthorn etc; the normal hedge plants of the Irish Countryside?
These dry raised verges do not provide the best conditions for Hazel growth..

Road kill; here is just one of three badgers that lie dead on the roads near Tara, she was a mother and as this is the time for cubs they will starve to death without her.
Can you imagine them silently waiting and dying?
Can nothing be done to help these gentle shy creatures. They are trapped between so many mad, unplanned roads at Tara now, trapped and killed by Government schemes, shot by “sportsmen” and have their hedge homes destroyed by just about everybody. They have no chance.

The standing stone pictured here stands forlorn along side the M3 fence. It marks the spot of the Gabhra battle and it is possible the one mentioned in the Book of Leinster. The myth of harpers gathering at Barronstown may be connected to this battle field too. Professor James McKillop wrote that harpers once gathered on old battle fields to remember the dead. The stone is just a few minutes down from the Barronstown destroyed site. A woman yesterday told me how she was allowed hold items from the site, as it was been dug out before they were taken away, including a three thousand year old arrow head

The hedges have been removed from the banks of the Gabhra stream and show the tracks of heavy earth movers. The river bed was also lowered. Why?
The river here never flooded and it is in such an archeologically sensitive area. One can imagine that no archaeologist was present. There was some very important archaeology remains along these banks, just beside that Oak tree, now all have been obliterated.
Here is the type of vandalism that is loose on our land now, it is destruction for the sake of destruction, nothing else. It almost certainly state aided and funded by grants etc.
It is the removal of habitat, archaeology and sense.

The other site is beside the Lismullen Institute. It was a lovely double ditched enclosure, possible the remains of an old Rath, circular and a beech wood the last time I was in it. On that day last year I sat in under the trees and watched a young hare washing her face and eating away, not even aware I was beside her.
It was dappled with sunlight, full of bird song, bees and leaves, it was regenerating itself too as there were loads of young beech saplings in the shadows of the old monster trees beside them. Now look at it.
It has been silently destroyed. We are told that this would not happen in the Tara/Skryne valley anymore, we are told that our heritage is safe but my walk yesterday shows that things have simply got worse.
Please become involved and stop the rape of our old green land. It is reaching appoint that soon it will be too late. We look set to lose all our old mysterious, wild and fallow places.