Taulas, talaiots and hipostolic chambers

Today we ventured out to see some of the archaeology on Menorca. There's loads of it, most of it easy to find, and the bigger sites have good interpretative information, and at this time of year, entry to them all is free. Started off a bit cloudy, but with some blue clouds, and thankfully no rain. First off we went to Trepuco, just outside Mahon. This has one of the tallest Taulas in Menorca - a Taula is basically a standing stone with another stone resting on top of it. Like a table. Used for worship apparently.

You can just see a Talaiot behind it, or a big heap of stones. Apparently used as a fortress to guard against invaders, and not hollow, but some of them have some chambers near the top.

Then we drove to Talati de Dalt, a huge site with many Talaiots:

and a Taula that was interesting because one of the nearby stones had fallen onto it.

There was also some dwellings which had survived, and this cased a minor panic as half way round the site I realised I no longer had my bag on my shoulder. It only had my money, passport, credit cards etc on it, so not important, and after the first panic, I realised I'd taken it off to take a picture of them. Ran back, and there it still was. Can you spot it?




From here we went to Torralba d'en Salort, and narrowly escaped being locked in the car park, as it closed at 2 and we hadn't realised. Not a lot to report from here as we only had 10 mins to look around. Another Taula, another Talaiot.

Finally we went to Sa Torre d'en Galmes, the biggest of the sites and the best, with views of the sea and in the distance Mallorca. The taula here wasn't very impressive as the top stone had been taken off in Roman tomes, but there were some very good remains of dwelling places in amongst the talaiots, with lintels still in place




And an excellent example of a circular house where you could see the rooms, central courtyard etc.



I managed to get my picture taken by all the Taulas, and you can see the difference in size, and the difference in temperature during the day:

Then, as it was getting late in the afternoon and we hadn't had lunch, we decided to drive to the nearest beach, Son Bou to see if we could get something to eat. But, like the rest of Menorca at the moment, it was closed. We did see some amazing waves though, very big for the Med, and watched some guys on small boards with little kite like sails attached (I'm sure there's a name for it but don't know what it is!) shooting up and down along the beach and jumping into the air.

So we drove home, and had lunch at 1630 in the apartment. Our clocks always change on holiday. Get up late, have breakfast late, lunch late in the afternoon, evening meal about 9pm.