This was my second Neolithic site in a week and it had Stonehenge to match up to, and I can safely say that it did! I am not really a big prehistoric site fan but this was pretty spectacular. We were told that the main passage-grave Newgrange is actually the oldest building in Europe, and after I have racked my brains I can't think of anything older! It predates Stonehenge by a good 1,000 years. The outside is much restored but it has been done very well, and many of the other sites have not been touched so you do have some idea of what it looked like pre-renovation. The inside though has been pretty much untouched since being completed about 5,200 years ago impressive stuff! The burial tomb in the centre is actually quite a calming place after the tight squeeze through the passage, a few of the stones have intricate Celtic carvings especially on the right hand side as you enter. Inside you have a brief display of the course of the sun as is seen on the winter solstice, which adds to the experience. Unfortunatly I was not able to get to the other two main sites at Knowth and Dowth which show what the sites would have looked like before the extensive restoration.

I visited the site on a day trip from Dublin, and despite having a bit of a fear of organised tours and the herding that comes with them I had a really good experience and would very strongly recommend anyone coming up from Dublin to hunt out Mary Gibbons tours (www.newgrangetours.com) as they are excellent and do a great job of weaving Irish history into a much broader Western European context, and they also guarantee entry to Newgrange which is a good guarantee to have as numbers are strictly limited. If you are doing it independently there are busses that run to the site from Drogheda (on the Dublin to Belfast motorway) four times a day or one direct from Dublin. You will have to go the excellent Visitor centre to gain access to the sites and will be transported from there on a guided tour, the only way to see the sites!