Just a few metres away from Table des Marchants is the long mound of tumulus Er Grah – a mighty tapering cairn maybe over 100 metres long. You can’t get inside it any more but must walk its length to appreciate it.
Latest Fieldnotes
August 3, 2007
Within 15metres of Grand Menhir Brise is the large stony cairn of Table des Marchants. Today there were a few visitors around and it would be impossible to have it to ourselves, though most visitors didn’t stay long. Bowing our heads to enter the 6 metre long passageway, it soon opened up and increased in height to perhaps nine feet tall, lined all around by vast walling slabs, some gloriously carved repeatedly with crooks, axe-shapes and other unknown symbols (which will probably be interpreted by someone somewhere as breasts or pubes.) The ceiling slab of the main chamber particularly impressed me – it was simply vast.
Grand Menhir Brisé (GMB) is almost too vast to comprehend. After we arrived off the ferry in St Malô the day before we swung by the Menhir du Champs Dolent at Dol-de-Bretagne and I thought that – at 32 feet tall – was a big one.
Turns out that compared to GMB, it’s a tiddler.
But GMB no longer stands. It lies fallen and broken in four mammoth pieces on the manicured grass to be marvelled at in the same way as one would view the body of a dead, beached whale. I was aware that a ‘fragment’ of this great broken stone had been carted off and reused to build Gavrinis which I would see later. So large is this stone that some wonder if it was ever vertical.
Very near to Luffang in some woodland are the Parc Gueren dolmens. These don’t really have public access, but we went on anyway. The first one, Parc Gueren I, is up an a rise to the left to the track – its tiny entrance gaping like a mouth.
On his previous visit here, it had freaked Mark out and he left in a hurry! This time he was OK with it. He had never visited Parc Gueren II and didn’t even know where it was. I switched on my megalithic-seeking antenna and went into ‘search’ mode. I spotted an animal pathway leading up into the dense undergrowth and hacking my way through the gorse located the dolmen in a very sorry state.
Completely overgrown, with thick trees and gorse growing through it, it reminded me a lot of the thrilling Treen barrows at Land’s End I’d seen a 14 months before. Just like at Treen, I got to work with my knife and hands pulling vegetation out of the way to reveal the small forgotten tomb. Forty-eight hours later I was still pulling splinters out of my hands. But it was worth it. Just to know it hasn’t been forgotten.
From the by now familiar car park of Table des Marchants, Er Grah and Grand Menhir Brisé, we walked 100 metres down the lane past the Locmariaquer cemetery and around the corner from the cemetery into the village towards the Mané Ruthiel.
Surrounded by lovely houses and flowering trees is Mané Ruthiel. (Julian calls it Mané Rutuel, but I’m following the road sign spelling. I’ve also read it spelt Mané Rutual in a couple of books. Take yer pick!)
In my notebook I wrote: ‘Wild! Inconceivably big!’ It’s a very long passage grave (about 20 metres) lined with MASSIVE wall slabs, with lots of mound still left but the most remarkable thing about it is the capstone of the main chamber (which is divvied into two rooms). The capstone is a reused menhir – a GARGANTUAN one!
Just picture the scene: a work gang moves, creates and erects a whopping great menhir. Chief carver has made a nice big human figure on it so the design can be seen from a good distance away. It looks great. But later on head honcho has a better idea. ‘I know’ il dit, ‘let’s move that menhir and use it as capstone on my new passage grave.’ The work gang finish their pork chops, pick up their levers and off they troop. Moving a 100 ton stone? No problem.
The carved figure now forms the ceiling of the interior chamber but it’s so big you can hardly make it out! This was indeed a cracker.
This rather nice pair, the Kerren dolmens, is at the edge of the hamlet of Kerren at the north end of the Locmariaquer peninsula.
Ruinous, but enchanting and right by the lane side hidden in trees, this was obviously used as a den by small boys in the village. A rough and broken ladder lent against one of the capstones and a small handwritten sign attached to some bailer twine in said ‘acces interdit’. Like so many dolmens round here these are forgotten and mostly unvisited (except by small boys playing ‘pirates’), overshadowed by their close neighbours, in this case Mané Lud, Table des Marchants, etc. just a kilometer away.
Mané Roularde is just at the back of St Trinité sur Mer – the posh, moneyed end of Carnac town where people express their wealth with glamorous marine craft.
Mané Roularde’s particular feature is that it is a very VERY long allée couverte, perhaps 15 or 20 metres but only four or five feet across down its whole length.
Sadly most of its caps are gone, but I’d now seen enough allée couvertes to imagine what it was like.
We passed through the hamlet of Beaumer and spotted the Dolmen de Beaumer just standing there rather cutely in the middle of the village. Mark had completely forgotten this one, even though it’s completely ACE.
But in an area so rich in A-list celebrity monuments, it must be easy to forget the lesser ones. I am particularly charmed by urban monuments and a real sucker for dolmens anywhere. So to see this little beauty, pert and lovely, dancing on the village green was a thrill.
Just metres away from Dolmens de Mane Kerioned across the Roman road and down a muddy track are the Dolmens de Kerival. This was my first transepted dolmen; four side chambers and an end chamber off a main passage.
Most intriguing. Kerioned and Kerival must have been two parts of the same site at one time, referencing each other in the landscape before being bisected by the road.
August 2, 2007
Sitting right by the main Roman road, this complex of three dolmens has absolutely tons to enjoy! One is a classy large allée couverte with four caps still up, later I painted this. Another is rather trashed. The third is still underground bit with the top of its whopping capstone exposed at ground level.
Descending the steps into the long passageway you finally reach the very large chamber which is tall enough for me to stand up in. Like an idiot I’d forgotten the torch. I dashed back to the car.
The torch revealed some terrific carvings of wavy and straight lines, crossed lines, triangles, figures and things I didn’t recognise or describe.
What a fab site!
The Crucuny cromlech is really rather thrilling.
It’s a wide arc of big stones now forming the boundary between a back garden of a pleasant house and a bucolic lane. I liked this a lot and wondered if the house was for sale.
Crucuny tumulus is another of seven Carnac Grand Tumuli.
It’s got a stone on the top and is horribly overgrown and it’s big and impressive, but it didn’t thrill me as much s the nearby Crucuny cromlech
Le Moustoir tumulus is one of the seven Carnac Grand Tumuli, but if you didn’t know it was there you may well miss it. It’s so big and overgrown that it could easily be mistaken for a natural mound. But this has secrets: secret chambers – one of which you can enter and secret stones including a gorgeous one on the top that Mark hugged enthusiastically. “It feels just like hugging your mum when you were little”, he said.
I tried it. He was right. It had all the right proportions.
This was the perfect place for our picnic. Mark particularly enjoyed the Tunnock’s teacakes I’d packed, as these are not available in France. He also told us of his dreams of Branston pickle, Robinson’s fruit cordials and other British delights. Simple things, eh?
‘Where now, Spaceship Mark?’ I asked. ‘We can walk among stones at the Petit Menec alignments’ he replied.
In thick woodland are the alignments at Petit Menec and I suspect these are not often visited. Today we had this wonderful, short woodland walk to ourselves.
Dotted around among the undergrowth are some pretty cool stones. They’re not as big as the ones at the main alignments at Kermario and Kerlescan. Mark wondered if this was built as an extension slightly later when many of large stones lying around had already been used at Kermario and Kerlescan. Sounded like a practical, sensible reason to me.
From the nearby monuments at Manio, we wandered back through the woods and along the roadside to admire the Kerlescan alignments. Astonishing stuff. You can’t walk among these, but their power is still overwhelming.
I’d never seen a stone rectangle before! It has shortish stones which create a wall effect as they are quite close together. It tapers slightly to one end and there’s a theory that perhaps it once enclosed a mound, but it somehow didn’t feel right for that. It felt more like a meeting place to me.
Just a two minute drive away from Kercado, the Géant de Manio menhir and Manio rectangle lurk in the woods. (I kept thinking of the fruity voice of Jack DeManio who, I think, was a BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme presenter. Whatever happened to him?)
The Géant de Manio is a monster menhir and obviously has very close connections to the Manio rectangle, being only 15 metres apart.
Kercado tumulus is the oldest monument here, dated at 5,000 ‘avant J.C’. Seven thousand years old. It was very cool. It’s privately owned so visitors have to pay but there was no one in the booth so we just walked right in. Situated at the highest point around, now surrounded by mature woodland full of big pink jays flying around above our heads, this small mound is like nothing I’ve seen before. It’s a mound, (like the one at Arbor Low) with a menhir on top, a stone circle embracing it and a very nice passage and large chamber inside.
We spent some time inside considering the eight great wall slabs and giant capstone with is supported not by the wall slabs, but by corbelling built above the wall slabs. This gives the impression of the capstone floating. Amazing. I loved it here. I’d like to have spent longer but Mark had another seventeen sites to show us yet…
Julian mentions the similarity this stone has to a cetacean’s head in his book and he’s absolutely right. Weathering has given it a long groove down one side that smiles at you like a dolphin asking for a herring.
From here, Mark pointed out the alignment of these monuments directly between tumulus St Michel in the west and Kercado tumulus to the west.
Breton expert Mark had accompanied Julian on his fact-finding mission for his book ‘The Megalithic European’ (TME) two years before and from what I could gather Mark had not visited many of the sites we would see today since then. Our first stop was just a 300metre walk away Kerluir dolmen and menhir.
In TME Julian recounts the story of his and Mark’s visit to this place and the gorse-diving necessary to reach it. As we approached we saw that a convenient path had been cut through the ‘ajonc’ to reach it. This disappointed Mark as I think he liked the difficulty/reward thing but pleased me as I am rather susceptible to gorse splinters. Today the gorse was in full bloom and it was like walking through a golden forest which was alive with green- and goldfinches. The dolmen is sweet and small and amazingly the capstone is held up by only two uprights. Exit the gorse and walk 15metres to up close and personal with the porpoise-like Kerluir menhir.
We met the young and lovely Spaceship Mark in bright sunshine at the main car park by the Kermario alignments. His pockets were bulging with detailed maps and a much-loved copy of Burl’s ‘Megalithic Brittany’. Mark was living and working in a campsite literally just opposite the alignments. Now that would be a great place to have your hols!
The alignments are particularly complete here and consist of some really big, tall stones. We stopped to admire them and to see the Lann Mané dolmen which lies just next to them close to the road.
The alignments are not open for visitors to walk amongst during the summer months so we couldn’t actually get in. This didn’t spoil my enjoyment at all; a clear view unsullied by visitors was good enough for me.
It is IMPOSSIBLE not to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale and obsession of menhir erection here. It’s truly astonishing!
A pleasant surprise to find this tomb while having a look around the gardens. Manicured yes, but equally in no danger of being ploughed up, or having rubbish dumped in it, so I’ll take what I can get.
It’s not worth paying the entrance fee to see it, and in some respects nor are the gardens given what NTS charge. I’d always advise joining, because no matter what your views on the organisation, you get ‘free’ entry to all the properties, throughout the UK. Nice places for picnics on the way home, and for finding hidden gems like this one.
This is a little mysterious. At the front of the relevant section of TME, there’s a picture of the talaiot of Sa Canova, in ruins.
In fact there are two talaiots in this area, one of which is a ruinous square one called Canova d’en Morell (pictured in TME) but the guide leaflet to Ses Paisses shows a magnificent talaiot of Sa Canova .... a round one.
This is actually known as Sa Clova des Xot, and is hopefully the one indicated on the map. According to the guy at Ses Paisses, it’s on private land, but is visible from the road to Sant Pere if you know where to look.
August 1, 2007
A definate A list site this one. A very convenient carpark is sited right next to the beach. We parked amongst the other motorhomes and I left the rest of the family making sandcastles, a short walk down the path next to the beach takes you directly to the Allee Coudee. When I got there I found a guide waiting for any one who visits he had a torch so I let him tag along, he didn’t speak much English and my French ain’t great, all I could get out of him was whilst lighting the rock art and pointing was “Goddess” and similar one word explanations. His name was (and still is I presume) Christophe. After a couple of minutes I managed to explain my name is Christopher too, but not that I thought he had a really cool job.
The passage bends to the left half way down
which is what differentiates an Allee Couverte from an Allee Coudee. It has carvings on nearly half the stones (hence the guide/guardian) and with a tall cupmarked menhir at the entrance, this is a real gem of aplace