Latest Fieldnotes

Just down the road from the priory and Dolmen de Coste-Rouge is another lovely monument – the dolmen de la Bruyere d’Usclas. Tucked away in thick mixed woodland with lovely views of the surrounding limestone hills there’s no entrance fee here! We sat has the place to ourselves and I sketched. We liked it here – plenty of surrounding rubble material too.

It’s signposted from the road. Near to it is a stupid statue that looks like a menhir that’s meant to look like prehistoric man, just next to where you park but don’t bother with it. It’s shit. Instead walk past to the dolmen – it’s not far and it’s another double decker dolmen, but with no concrete slabs, just really nicely proportioned well cut blocks making a really pleasing monument. It has a nice little passage and plenty of mound.

Access Just 85 metres SE of Dolmen 1 de Coste-Claude. See Dolmen 1 de Coste-Claude for details of how to reach the dolmens.

Visited Wednesday 5 September
Quite ruined, but probably worth a look if you’re visiting Dolmen 1. There is also another even more ruined dolmen nearby. Again, see Dolmen 1 de Coste-Claude.

Access: A walk of a few hundred metres along a decent dirt path (might be muddy in the wet). Take the A75 motorway to the Lodève area (see also Dolmen de Coste-Rouge and Dolmen de la Bruyère d’Usclas).

For this one and others very near by, leave the A75 at junction 52 and take the D25 through St Etienne-de-Gourgas and St Pierre-de-la-Fage. From St Pierre, continue for around 3km and take a left turn (north) on the small D152. The dirt path to the dolmen is reasonably easy to spot on the left (west) after around 1.5km.

As you set off on the path, you should be able to see what looks like a menhir a few metres away on your left. This is actually (allegedly!) a sculpture by Paul Dardé, representing prehistoric man. Hmmm. Ignore it (or have a quick look!) and continue on the path which goes through scrubby trees, bending round to the left. After around 150 metres, you should be at the passage grave, on your left I think.

Visited Wednesday 5 September
This one had been fascinating us ever since we saw a photo, as it looks like a double-decker dolmen! (The nearby Grand Dolmen de Ferussac is similar but has a nasty concrete sideslab.)

In both cases, what you actually have is simply a passage grave where the chamber is considerably taller than the passage. The remaining mound is just to the height of the passage, all of which creates an unusual appearance. They do look cool though!

The monument is smaller than I expected from photos, but I guess if the whole thing was covered, being so tall it would have been a pretty large structure incuding its full mound. Restored to its current gorgeous condition in 1978, without a nasty concrete replacement stone....

The ruined Dolmen 2 de Coste-Claude is around 85 metres to the SE, but I only just found it with a compass. According to Bruno Marc in Dolmens et Menhirs en Languedoc et Roussillon there is also a third, even more ruined tomb 265 metres to the SW but I didn’t even try for that one. (I’m also not sure whether it’s 265 metres from Dolmen 1 or Dolmen 2.)

We didn’t actually make it to this, the very finest of the Arles-Fontvieille group of monuments.

It is somewhere on the northern side of the Mont de Cordes, a fascinating limestone peak rising alone 65ms from the plain of La Crau with dizzying silver cliffs of stone poking out of dense woodland clinging to its precipitous slopes.

The hypogee is vast and uniquely designed – and I was desperate to reach it, quite willing to trespass and scramble up steep pathless cliffs, and search through the woodland. We searched for a path to it – a couple were marked on the map – but every way we looked, every farm track we took was barred with enough barbed wire to satisfy a small army. It was impossible and we admitted defeat.

So instead I’ll have to describe it to you.

It was first described by Anibert in 1789 in his dissertation topographique sur la montagne de Cordes et ses monuments who published a plan of it, and according to Glyn Daniel who saw it in the late 1950s ‘remains much as it is today’. Anibert described the tomb being shaped like a sword, hence the folk name L’epee do Roland.

Daniel describes it as a ‘gallery grave set in a low pointed mound 230 feet long by 165 feet wide, orientated east to west [as are all the monuments in this group] with steps cut into the rock at the western end leading down into the monument which has a total [internal] length of 120 feet.

‘It is divided into two sections, the first or western section is 40 feet long, is roofed in part and has two side chambers, while the main eastern section is 80 feet long, 11 feet high and 9 feet wide. The sides slope inwards; immediately west of the two side chambers and again at the division between the eastern narrow end of the chamber and the main western chamber are two ‘kennel-holes’. These are cut into the rock, as for that matter is the whole monument.‘

Early archaeos thought it was rock cut, but roofed with capstones, but this isn’t so. The first stratum of rock covering the hill has been left in situ and the great gallery cut underneath – the effect is very much of capstones.

The tomb has carvings, variously described as the human figure, but I can find no images of these.

At the eastern end of the cairn covering the grotte is a large menhir 22 feet long by 9 feet wide. Daniel says that in 1960 it was broken and lying on the ground.

Apparently it has never been excavated. Daniel says: ‘it has been open to the public for centuries, and is not a monument where one would expect to make any discoveries’. How ironic! Open for centuries, eh? Well, not now, unfortunately.

Anyone planning to visit this monument should write to the landowner well in advance – whoever he or she is... perhaps one of the local farms?

The hypogee is a chamber cut directly into the bedrock – 8 feet deep – and topped with some huge capstones. Stairs are rock cut into the descent but are worn smooth with the many feet that have walked in and out of here over the past 5,500 years. The sides of the hypogee are unfeasibly flatly cut and slope inwards at an angle. The portal stone is a beautiful even U shape. The whole chamber is about 7 metres long and we absolutely loved it.

We found it easily, quite close to the road (D17) near the Restaurant de la Mont de Cordes and it is quite lovely.

It is very similar in design and construction to Arnaud-Castellets and Bounias, with rock-cut steps into the large chamber – but larger. Outside, a section of a rock cut ditch to the north west of grotte, which once surrounded the whole tump can still be seen.

It’s quite close the the road, in the grounds of the restaurant de la Mont de Cordes (which has a very nice looking menu) where we asked for directions.

It was just 30 ms away from the eatery, cut into the top of small rocky rise. Bounias was even bigger than Castelets! The portal was arched at the same angle as the interior walls. The interior height is about 9 feet tall – imagine that 9 feet deep and rock cut! – and I paced it back for 14 long strides. An astonishing place! So HUGE and so hidden! There are no signs to it at all.

We had to trespass to get to it by squeezing under a barbed wire fence. We had anticipated asking at a farmhouse but huge locked metal gates – padlocked and topped with more barbed wire indicated that visitors should fuck right off. Nervously, aware of farmers with short tempers and shotguns, we sought out a path through the low, spiky bushes to the top of the hillock where the map showed the monument is. We found it and it’s quite trashed. This one was not rock cut, which might account for the fact that I’d read somewhere it was called the dolmen de Coutignargues, rather than hypogee.

A deep pit had been dug and lined with drystone walling, which today only survives in places. Some large stones, perhaps capstones or portal stones, lay haphazardly here and there.

Delighted to have found it despite its condition we decided not to hang around. As we descended our trespassing became all too real...

A lovely little dolmen in a lovely place with yes youve guessed it lovely views. I thought it time to witness the sunrise from here and coincidentally it was two days from the equinox so I payed special attention. On the horizon the mountain known as moelfre uchaf sticks out most, and it was here that the sun rose from, Coincidence ? maybe, but the even more persuasive alignments at cerrig pryfaid stone circle was ready to dispel any doubts. This could be the reason why Tal y fan has so many monuments.

The fallen stone is still fallen, I wondered whether to re-erect it but I didn’t have any strong women with me so I left it. On this my third visit, the area has taken on a new guise, I had often wondered why they didn’t use bigger stones there’s plenty of them around.
But having just watched the Equinox sun rise from behind the biggest sharpest mountain on the horizon and found it beyond coincidence, I just had to go to this here stone circle and see if that same mountain is visible from there too. The circle has two outliers which may have confused some visitors, but standing behind one stone and looking through the circle to the horizon the mountain (moelfre Uchaf) is in a perfect line. The other outlier bisects the circle centre at an angle of about 120 degrees the mid winter sunrise line .I couldn’t believe no one had mentioned it before. I’m off to the lakes for winter sol, but I’m beginning to wish I could be in two places at once.

La Crau is a flat plain to the east of Arles, a landscape much beloved of Vincent van Gogh: rich farmland criss-crossed by canals, farmtracks and a railway line. To the north east are the Alpilles, a chain of limestone mountains, rich in bauxite. The first mountain is the Mont de Cordes which rises solitary from the plain and was once an island, and it’s overlooked by another limestone ridge of Montmajour, on which was built a huge ugly fortress of an abbey, which dominates the view. The area is not only significant for me from a Vincent van Gogh point of view, but also because it holds a number of important, secret, prehistoric sites. As we were to discover many of these were ‘acces interdit’.

There are five monuments in the so-called Arles-Fontvieille group (because they lie beteen Arles and Fontvieille): the grotte des Fees on the Mont de Cordes, the grotte de Bounias, the grotte de la source, the dolmen de Coutignargues and the grotte du Castelets. They are variously referred to as grottes, hypogees or dolmens in the various literature I can find (which isn’t much).

However, in what literature I can find, this seems to be a very important group of monuments which has been largely forgotten.

Glyn Daniel calls them ‘among the largest and most impressive chamber tombs in France’ which have yielded grave goods of ‘a rich a very important character’.

Access: On the same road as Dolmen de Coste-Rouge, just a little further east. From the priory where Coste-Rouge is, travel less than 1km east. When the road forks, take the right onto a dirt road. There is another junction almost immediately – this time go left.

In just under 100 metres you should see a little sign on the left pointing into the trees along a reasonably well-worn path. The dolmen is less than 100 metres into the trees, right on the path.

Visited Wednesday 5 September
Another beauty. Nice dolmen of pretty large slabs in the low remnants of its rubble cairn. At first glance, it seems to have two capstones, one of which has slipped off the back. But once you think about it, it’s obviously actually one huge stone broken in two.

The front part still covers the whole chamber – the back part has fallen when it was broken because it’s basically a huge overhang. In Dolmens et Menhirs en Lanuedoc et Rousillon, Bruno Marc says that in one piece, it was the largest capstone in the area – just over 4 metres long! There is also a fairly large slab on edge right next to the dolmen on the mound. Monsieur Marc says this could be part of a kist – possibly.

No real views of surrounding terrain, not least because of the forestry that covers the hillsides here. The trees on the steep hillside to the north(ish) looked very pretty in the sun and gave dramatic backdrop though....

If it stood up straight and tucked its shirt in it might be 7ft tall, but its got a severe lean. (like that stone near Carsington water). I thought once that it might fall over one day, but after seeing the equinox sun rise over Moelfre uchaf and noting that the stone leans towards it I wonder if it might be intentional. The centre stone at Boscawen un also purposely leans so it wouldn’t be a first.

Burl calls this a playing card shape but I don’t see it myself, it looks like a half buried stone axe to me. Thin on one side and really broad on the other it’s a very striking stone . Visible from the path/lane to the Poets stone with the peak of Tal y Fan behind it.

Access: Signposted from the nearest village – Le Pouget. As long as you don’t mind driving carefully on a dirt road that gets a little rough at times, the walk is less than 100 metres across the corner of a field and along a good path. Otherwise a walk of around 1km, probably a little more, from Le Pouget.

We went here on the way to the Dolmen de Coste-Rouge. It’s easily accessible from junction 57 on the A75 motorway, or (as we did) from the N109 from Montpellier. From the N109, take the D32 at Gignac – south towards Canet. It’s just under 7km, after passing a village called Pouzols you need to keep an eye out for a small left (east) to Le Pouget.

If you miss it, you’ll come to a smallish roundabout, which you can go to Le Pouget from, but it’ll take you all round the town (we know – we did it!) If you’re coming from the A75 motorway, go through Canet, and when you reach the little roundabout head for Gignac for a very short distance and find the turning east (right).

So, from the little turning to Le Pouget, head east just into the village, but as soon as you reach it, keep an eye out for dolmen signs and a tiny very narrow and tight right turn uphill squeezed between buildings. Go up this road which climbs and passes out of the village. As you reach the last few buildings look out for a (I think) handmade sign for the dolmen down a dirt road on your right.

Take the dirt road. There are a few spots where you’ll need to drive very carefully, but we managed in a family car. Wouldn’t fancy it in a low-slung sporty-job though!!! Go right to the end of the road and park.

At the end of the road you’ll find a large stone on each side (the left one is very menhirlike and has ‘dolmen’ written on it). In front of you is a field with a tree under which is a little stone bench. To the right of this is a path out of the field, and the dolmen in its mound is only about 25 metres along this and you can’t miss it....

Visited Wednesday 5 September
Nice passage! We arrived at the site to find, to our surprise, a group of four French pensioners having a coffeebreak from a hike. They kindly moved off the monument so that we could have a good poke about and take pictures.

The passage grave sits in a largeish mound and has been nicely restored. The passage and chamber are around 12 metres long, dry-stone walled, except for the chamber’s entrance stone, back slab and the capstones. The entrance stone to the chamber has a beautiful ‘kennel-hole’ (or catflap as we tend to call them...) and the exposed passage is elegantly long and narrow.

Interestingly, the dry-stone walling of the chamber is kind of corbelled, narrowing at the top. It was fascinating to see later in the trip, that this seems to be an echo of the hypogées in the Arles-Fontvieille Group, such as the Grotte de la Source – especially as the Arles-Fontvieille Group is thought to be so compact because the builders ‘moved on’ rather than spreading.

According to the guide at the Dolmen de Coste-Rouge, the entrance hole was “created by the archaeologists”. I’m not sure how she knows this though, as she admitted that most of her info on ‘her’ dolmen comes from Bruno Marc’s Dolmens et Menhirs en Languedoc et Roussilion. He says de Gallard is restored, but is not so specific – I suspect she was just trying to ‘big-up’ Coste-Rouge as the only ‘genuine’ kennel-hole.... (We were later to discover another, even more catflapish one in the Oise valley, way oop north!)

Great views of the surrounding area, particularly over the area to the north, but we didn’t get a chance to see how visible the tomb is from below. A lovely spot where we stayed for long enough for Jane to sketch. The “sweet biddies” were still there when we left – so they obviously liked it!

There’s a steep side and a gentle sloping side, like a twerp I went up the longway . The defences on the western side are the best preserved, with no really obvious entrances, but another great view. Situated amongst a maze of small lanes halfway between Snowdonia and the Clwydian range .( all of which Iv’e been to ).
The hillfort could be part of an Equinox alignment along with Moelfre Uchaf and Cerrig Pryffaid stone circle, though with a thousand years inbetween the construction of the two sites it seems probable that its fortuitous.

It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry when you’re faced with it! We’d seen a picture of it printed on the label of a bottle of beer the night before and been mightily amused. The reality of it is that it’s quite small – about 5’3”. Though how much the silly christians removed from its original size to fashion it into this bizarre cross is impossible to tell.

We set out early to find the allee couverte du Bois-Couturier near Guiry-en-Vexin. They have maps to show you how to find it at the prehistory museum in Guiry. You have to walk about 20 minutes through a forest, on reasonably good clearly marked paths, to find it. But when you have you’ll love it!

It was rediscovered in 1915 and excavated until 1919: 200 skeletons found as well as polished stone axes, tools and ceramic shards. It’s 8 ms long and 2 ms wide – I thought the proportions seemed quite odd compared with many allee couvertes we’d seen. Essentially it’s a sunken box entirely lined with drystone walling and covered with 4 capstones.

The most astonishing thing about it is the round and lovely porthole in the portal stone – quite perfect! I crawled through it and into the tomb. I sat inside to consider that that the round blocking stone ‘door’ was discovered during excavation, and in superb condition. It now lives in the nearby prehistory museum. It looks like a great saucepan lid, complete with handle.

This is a ‘Hollywood’ site by any standards.

La Pierre Turquaise is a big league A-list ‘Hollywood’ megalithic site! Nestled into mature oak forest, and with acorns raining down all around us, we sat drinking tea from our flasks and smoking a small cigar to help us relax and admire this lovely place. In 1842 it was nearly broken up to help pave Paris, would you believe and in 1985 it suffered a horrific explosive attack which badly damaged it. One of the stones was sheared off and the top piece lies near the allee couverte.

It’s 10.6 ms long and nearly 2 ms wide and despite the 1985 attack still has 2 mighty capstones. Its calm woodland setting reminded us of some of the hunebedden in NL. Hard hats required though, to protect yourself from all those falling acorns. That, or bring a piglet!

Just a few fields away from La Pierre Plate is the allee couverte de Blanc Val, which has lost all its capstones and now lies in a scrubby patch of thyme and weeds at the edge of a field near Presles.

Blanc Val has a complete set of internal orthostats lining what is essentially a stone box. At one end, the bottom half of the portal stone is still visible, with the semicircle of what was once a porthole entrance. Blanc Val is not a thrilling monument to see, but the fact that it’s still here and that traces of cement on it shows that someone recently gave a toss about it is good enough for me.

You can drive quite close on a dirt track on the edge of the woodland and take a path in. It’s quite near a ‘Poney-Club’. I don’t remember a signpost but this grid ref is correct.

It lies in the thick woodland of the Foret Domenial L’Isle Adam, and is a sunken length of megalithic drystone walling between orthostats, still bearing the weight of four capstones. At the portal end, a carved stone has a kennel hole in it which presumably once had a blocking stone. All round the allee couverte, which is fenced for protection, wild strawberry plants formed a carpet underfoot. A very nice monument.

The remains of this probable five stone circle (O’Nuallain PRIA 84C, 1984; 44) are situated at the eastern end of a marshy field which slopes down gently north to a noisy and intensely overgrown stream. The ground rises towards Carrigfadda to the southwest but a view to the horizon in this direction is obscured by a line of trees near the southern field boundary.

Two hip-height stones; the axial and its northern flanker are all that is left to immediate sight. O’Nuallain noticed a quartz boulder 1.7m and a stone 90cm at their maximum placed against the fence a few yards to the east. I could only find the quartz stone, and then only by its brilliance speckling through the earth and growth now covering it. I dusted it off somewhat for the photograph and then covered it up again.

The axial stone leans outwards considerably to the west but looks as if it originally presented a level, flat top, pitted in the centre. The flanker leans inwards to the south giving it a rather bulbous look, tapering to the bottom. Its shading and shape are very striking to the eye.

O’Nuallain grants the possibility that the two stones at the fence originally formed part of the monument and it certainly would not be unusual for the coincidence of a sizeable quartz block with a stone circle in this area. Its dimensions are apparently in excess of the wonderful conglomerate in Lettergorman and I would have loved to have seen more than the foot-size patch I scratched open.

The site can be approached with courage or recklessness through the marsh, brambles, water traps, sheer drops and wire fences from the road to the east but may be better attempted from the Carrigfadda side.

Access: In grounds of St Michel de Grandmont Priory (Prieurié de St Michel-de-Grandmont). Smallish entrance charge for priory and dolmen together and only visitable with guide on a ten minute walk on undulating gravelly paths.

Afterwards we realised that the guided tour allegedly also takes in a menhir (with interesting-sounding ruts and creases in the rock nearby) and 2 other (more battered) dolmens – the dolmens de Belvédère – but we weren’t offered the option....

Take the A75 motorway to Lodève. We left it at junction 53 travelling north, then skirted the town on the D25, following signs to the priory onto the little D135 to the east. This is steep and winding to begin with as it climbs into the hills. Once onto the top of the hills, the priory is only a few km and still signposted. After our visit, we discovered that it’s possible to spot the dolmen from one of the bends before you reach the priory.

Visited Wednesday 5 September
A stunner! We arrived at the priory at around 1pm and were told that the next planned tour to the dolmen was at 3pm, but that as it was quiet, the guide would take us and another couple in about 10 minutes.

This was lucky as we didn’t want to hang about, but possibly the reason we weren’t shown the other dolmens and the menhir. I was too excited to remember they were even there, so we didn’t think to ask about them. Gah.

The dolmen was as thrilling as it looks. An impressive monument with a pretty unusual and well-preserved ‘kennel-hole’ entrance, a huge cuplike/ballaunlike depression on one side and a small carved ‘christianising’ cross on the other. The dolmen stands in low remnants of its rubble mound, on a ridge running out from the hillside. Beautiful views of surrounding hills and valleys, partially obscured by trees.

The capstone is around 3.15 x 3 metres and rubbing against it was apparently a bizarre cure for skin diseases in the middle ages (according to Bruno Marc in Dolmens et Menhirs en Languedoc et Roussilion – if my French translation is good enough!)

Wonderful!

This round barrow is on the Purbeck golf course (hole number 7) but is on a public bridleway which also leads to the Agglestone and the Puckstone. It is a medium sized bell type with a flat top in reasonable condition.