What's quite a lot like Cornwall, but with fewer people, nicer cheese, empty roads, better weather and bigger megaliths? Brittany, of course!
The very far west of Brittany, Finistere, literally 'Land's End', is the place to find giants. Specifically, giant menhirs. After a while, any menhir smaller than about four metres tall, which anywhere else in the world would impress you, in Finistere you find yourself thinking 'Pah, what a pathetic tiddler.' Size matters around these parts.
At six and half metres tall with a rounded profile this monster stands proud on a little rise of land surrounded by huge fields, which today are inhabited by a nervous flock of partridges which exploded noisily out of the field next to it.
You can drive right up to it, the lane runs right past it.
Just east of the little town of Porspoder and you enter the land of the giants where around every corner, there seems to be another monster menhir. Take Kerhouezel…
The menhir of Kerhouezel has many names. I've also seen it called Kerdelvas, and in our 1984 edition of 'Megalithic Brittany' Aubrey Burl calls it Kerreneur. Well, whatever it's called it's another six and half metre whopper, very slim with four rounded sides and a gracefully tapering top.
The pair of menhirs at a fork in the road near St Denec are each individually relatively small for round here. One measures 3.2m, and the second 3.1m, but add that up and you have a total befitting of Finsterian menhirs! Small and pointy, they reminded us strongly of The Pipers. There's also a fallen one of a measly 2.7ms, so once this was almost certainly an alignment.
This is a very nice pair of menhirs standing 60ms apart in the same field. One measures 4ms and the second 3.9ms. Slender, finely and evenly shaped all the way to the top, like most of the menhirs here, each one seems to have four distinct sides.
Less than 500ms away from the menhirs Mesdoun, I spotted another 'dolmen'sign at the roadside. After having seen what was beginning to feel like a million menhirs in a matter of minutes (such is their frequency) the sight of a dolmen was too good to miss.There are so many monuments round here that not all, indeed not even 50%, of them are marked on the map, so we got into the habit of reading every road sign for clues. This was the Poulyot dolmen.
But back to the menhirs. We'd deliberately left seeing the biggest until last and now it was time to face the monsters. The biggest pair of all, in fact!
Kergadiou menhirs are a pair: the standing one (or should I say towering?) is 8.75ms tall and an utter beast! Some books say it's the second tallest menhir in Brittany.
Eighty metres away in the same field, its partially fallen twin is no less impressive. Lying like a beached whale at perhaps 25 degrees, like a giant sundial, it is an unbelievable 11ms long - 11ms! It is less of a menhir and more of a runway on an aircraft carrier. It simply invites you to run up its flat surface and stand on the summit from where there's a good 4m drop to the ground.
Oh la la, it's big. Very big. They say the tallest still standing menhir in the world. And I can believe it. It's 9.5ms, for goodness sake! That's 31 feet in old money. And it used to be taller still! A lightning strike a couple of centuries ago knocked 2ms off the top apparently. Quite apart from its sheer dizzying height, it is a curious shape; not even and slender like most of the menhirs, but wider than it is thick.
It has two curious sticky-outy hemispherical lumps carved on either side, each about the size of half a football. Each is at about belly height. I could well imagine superstitious people wanting to increase their fecundity coming to the menhir to rub their abdomens on the lumps in the hope of getting babies. They'd have been better off just having sex…
13 June 2009
Today we were to meet up with a few people at Long Meg. But before we did we thought we'd first swing by Glassonby cairn circle, which is dead easy to reach from the lane in a field today policed by young Holstein bullocks with only one thing on their minds – to practice close surveillance on us. I armed myself with a large branch, just in case things got nasty. But it turned out these boys didn't have the balls.
As we arrived to inspect the site, so did scubi! "You two get everywhere" he said. Yep, we certainly try.
Glassonby is a very sweet little circle with plenty of brick-sized stones and rubble left in the middle and a good ring of medium sized kerb stones forming the circle. Now it is inhabited by rabbits, some of which scattered down the field while others disappeared into holes dug into the cairn as we approached. Its bucolic hillside setting and tiny diameter makes it particularly charming.
We stopped off to see Little Meg on way our back from Glassonby towards Long Meg, carefully dodging the coast-to-coast bicyclists which swarmed round these lanes.
It was far less overgrown than when I was last here in 2003. This, I assume, is also a cairn circle, but its stones are far larger than Glassonby's, and one famously has spirals carved into it.
As we arrived at Long Meg and her Daughters, the light on the pointy menhir showed up perfectly the spiral carvings on the flattest face of the menhir. I'd been here before but could hardly see the rock art then; this time it was as clear Catherine wheels in November.
Scubi arrived, then Vicster and her mate Vick, then pebs. We cracked open the picnics and sat in the hot sunshine by Long Meg and feasted on cheese, very garlicky hummous, smoked salmon, pebs' homemade olive and ham bread and strawberries.
Like Avebury, this place is so massive you can't stand far enough away to get it all in one view. Also like Avebury, it has a road running through the middle. And also like Avebury some people will insist on tying pieces of tat as so-called 'offerings' to the lowest branches of the nearest 'sacred' tree. There was a broken child's toy lorry lovingly suspended by a piece of carefully selected baler twine, an enchanting old stripey sock, a badge with the legend 'I've been to Ostrich World', some strips of sacred plastic bag, a faded old ribbon, and a red plastic fake crystal heart - no doubt harvested from a Christmas cracker - bobbled around in the breeze.
Its enormity alone makes Long Meg and her Daughters a very special place. The large stones which form the circle are evenly spaced and despite many of them having been toppled, are so big they still look like they're standing. I defy anyone not to be impressed by Long Meg and her Daughters. Just don't let this impressiveness move you to tie offensive rubbish to the trees. Jack-in-the-Green wouldn't approve.
Scubi, Moth, Jane, Vicster, pebs and Vicky at Long Meg
Replete, and with the sun beating down and tiny high clouds scudding overhead in the bluest of skies, we all decided to head as a convey over to Moor Divock, just 14 miles away to visit The Cockpit stone circle. This involved a walk of perhaps two kilometres over a track on the moor. The company was so good I hardly noticed the walk and only stumbled about twice.
Once at the circle, we sat together in the sun and watched exaltations of larks rise out of the moorland.
14 June 2009
Next day we arranged to meet again at Copt Howe, the Langdale boulders, in Great Langdale near Grasmere. We watched as the sun swung round in the sky to until the light was at the right angle to reveal the extraordinary rock art carved on the flat surface of one of the largest boulders. I made a little sketch.
It's amazing just how many wonderful prehistoric sites you can cram into one short trip if you're so inclined. Cumbria has many stone circles, some of which I had not yet visited. Moth peruses TMA for pearls of Copey wisdom, while sporting the best T-shirt for the job
As we drove up the M6 we listened to the Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie show on the radio. They were encouraging listeners who may be pop stars (current or ex) to text in to the show. Many were spoofs texted in by naughty listeners just pretending: "Ayup! Elton John here…" Mark and Stuart were guessing which texts might be real. I thought I'd try to fool them. I texted in: "Yowzah drudes, Julian Cope here watching the sun set over Silbury Hill. Awl love from the Archdrude". They were certain it was really Julian.
Next morning, we headed west from the Travelodge in Penrith where we were staying (like Julian did in the film), towards Castlerigg stone circle.
I was last here in August 2003 with my late friend treaclechops. This was one of her favourite sites, and a photo she took of it back in the early 90s has both graced my walls and been etched into my heart for many years. The monument itself is marvellous enough, but the natural amphitheatre of the fells, soft and green all around in the bright sunshine combined with the added poignancy of the loss of treaclechops' made the place today seem more dramatic than ever.
The stones are small and whether they were re-erected in the right holes or not didn't matter to me. I cleared the centre of the circle of the rusty horseshoe and remembrance day crucifix and stood back and admired the stones. I loved it here. The sky seemed very big.
Poor Greycroft. This once magnificent stone circle is much neglected, hideously overgrown with thick unmanaged grasses and weeds, fenced in like a prisoner and overlooked by its neighbour, the industrial nightmare of the Sellafield nuclear power plant.
But it's not all bad. At least the fence prevents sloppy tractor drivers from bumping into the stones, and at least the weeds offer some kind of untouched habitat for birds, insects and small mammals. The view down to the sea is gorgeous and my one crumb of comfort is that despite everything, it is still here, its pinkish stones glinting in the sunshine.
Its 14 small stones are all down and it seems to be melting back into the gentle slope of the field, overlooked by distant fells. But like Greycroft, the miracle is that it's still here at all.
Mighty Mayburgh henge is slap bang next to the M6 at Penrith, but don't let that put you off – indeed, let it encourage you to come and see it! The henge's grassy rubble banks rise 20 or 30 feet all around to form a giant cup with a vast menhir in the middle. The last remnant of what, I wondered? A few mature trees grow randomly out of the humungous banks, but the henge is so impressive they seem tiny even though they must rise 60 feet or more.
Inside the henge there is no internal ditch, which is a bit weird, but this seems to add to the enclosedness of the site. What was it for? What WAS it for? Private events? Fortifications? Sacred ceremonies? Trading? Cattle market? A sports arena? What WAS it for? To me this henge is way more impressive than Avebury.
Unlike its close neighbour at Mayburgh, Arthur King's round table is smaller in diameter and appears to have mostly melted back into the earth. The earthworks still have sufficient sculpting to impress though and in the strong sunlight its gentle grassy contours looked wonderful. The road has nipped off its most northerly edge.
Iipona tikis at Puamau
Twelve miles from Atuona, the main settlement on the Marquesan island of Hiva Oa, is the tiny village of Puamau, on the east of the island, looking out towards the great blue vastness of the Pacific ocean. It takes two dramatic, hot and bumpy hours in a four-wheel drive to get there. The dirt roads are treacherous, winding around impossibly spiky volcanic headlands with sheer drops on either side, through the rainforest, over peaks and around ridges. It's no wonder that until very recently, the only way to get anywhere in the Marquesas was on horseback. With resources on the island so scarce (everything except fruit, fish and chickens has to be imported) we were lucky to get there; the island's one petrol station was almost out of fuel and the supply boat wasn't due in for 48 hours.
The reason for our trip to Puamau was to see the Iipona archaeological site in which five giant tikis stand facing east, among a rubble of pae paes (stone platforms), standing stones, stone steps and ceremonial terraces. I have to tell you that this site blew my mind.
A giant polissoir stands at the side of track which leads you up to the site.
The first tiki you reach is the so-called 'flying tiki' (proper name Maki Taua Pepe) which is supposed to represent a woman lying on her stomach giving birth – though as a mother I can tell you that lying on one's front to give birth is a very silly idea. On the tiki's pedestal is a carved a strange creature perhaps a dog, though to me it looked more like a llama, but what this meant I couldn't begin to guess.
The largest tiki here, called Takaii, is the largest in Polynesia except for Easter Island's moai. It stands 2.67m tall and dominates the site.
There are 3 other tikis here too, standing in this hot jungle clearing. Our driver/guide and a French couple we were travelling with saw our enthusiasm and left us while they went off elsewhere. For an hour and half not a single other visitor came to this spectacular and wild place. This gave us time to think about the complexity of the site: the skill in carving these stones, laying out the vast site, and what did it all mean? Were the tikis the effigies of real ancestral warrior chiefs? Or perhaps god or spirits? How were they used? Did people make offerings? Were the stones sacred? Did they have special powers or were they taboo? Despite being used until a few centuries ago until Europeans came, no one seems to know.
On a nearby pae pae a number of disembodied tiki heads had been placed, lost from their original location indicating that at one time perhaps there were very many more complete tikis here.
A tiny glimpse perhaps, of an early obsession to replicate giant humanoid statues which became out of control on Easter eventually causing its civilisation to collapse?
Our driver collected us and took us down to nearby pension Chez Marie Antoinette for lunch. She had cooked us a delicious vegetarian lunch of rice, avocado and lime, starfruit, fried bananas in coconut, an unidentified glutinous vegetable and fried breadfruit chips. I particularly wanted to try breadfruit as I have long been fascinated by the story of HMS Bounty which came to Tahiti in 1787 to collect breadfruit saplings.
In Marie Antoinette's beautiful garden stood a finely built pae pae and four tombs, including the tomb of the last chief of the Puamau valley who died early in the 20th century.
His tomb was decorated by two small tikis standing guard – clearly they were much older that the tomb. As we travelled through Hiva Oa, we saw many randomly placed giant ancient carved stones, some just lying at the roadside, or reclaimed in people's gardens; one even had a horse tethered to it.
A copra worker burned coconut husks in the forest nearby and a pall of blue smoke crept through the trees. It was very atmospheric. This place took four flights on planes which got ever smaller, nine and half time zones, hours of research and months of saving my pennies to reach. It's so remote and isolated that it doesn't even appear in many atlases. An overwhelming feeling of standing at the very edge of the world hit me and I loved it.
Habitat: Commonly sighted in fields round Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. Distribution: Widespread; occasional migrations to overwinter in Africa or other hot climes. Characteristics: A tall, blonde, opinionated bird with feisty temper when provoked. Prone to spells of gloom during winter months. Usually sporting dark plumage, except for golden head, can often spotted with sketchbook and brushes near megalithic sites. Feeding habits: Easily tempted with cheese (any variety) or a nice cup of tea. Unfeasibly fond of curry. Behaviour: Unpredictable, approach cautiously. Responds very favourably to flattery. Abhors: slugs, invisible sky gods, Tories, the Daily Mail, bigots, eggs, the cold, walking and timewasting. Adores: a man called Moth, painting, live music, furry creatures, tea administered frequently, hot places, cheese, writing crap poetry, David Attenborough, Ernest Shackleton, Vincent van Gogh and the English language. Want more?: see her website.
Big old rocks I find appealling
Their secrets they are not revealing
Some are chambers, some are tombs
Hidden in valleys and in combes
Some are said to act like clocks
With shadows cast out from their rocks
I like the way they just survive
When I visit, I feel alive
So I chase my rocks around the maps
Round England, Ireland and France, perhaps
But there ain't nothin' that I liked so much
As to see the Hunebedden, dem is Dutch.
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