Latest Fieldnotes

The first chambered cairn of the day, at about 7am ish the sun had yet to reach over the hill to the east. Visible from the road if you know where to look, and only a 5 minute walk so well worth a visit. Great views up and down the Strath of Kildonan. There was more to see in the imediate vacinity including more chambered cairns and at least 3 souterrains but time was not on our side.

This one’s tucked away in the car park of a ‘dinosaur zoo’. The sweet little dolmen sits behind a little wooden fence, presumably to prevent kids climbing on it, as it seems quite dinkily precarious. It was great to have an ‘easy win’ and park right next to it. A charming monument, if a little bizarre to hear the roars of tyrannosaurus rex from the nearby attraction!

Next we went to find the dolmen de Pradinas, a very small, rather haphazardly restored dolmen standing near a dusty crossroads behind some trees. It’s good that someone took the trouble to cement it back together again, but it lacks any atmosphere…

Approximate coordinates only

Dolmen 6 is weird thing!

Originally it was a pretty ordinary dolmen for round here, but it’s drystone lined and slightly corbelled and curved at one end, and has two capstones – or was it one at one time?

But curiously somebody has built a tower practically on top if it, of drystone rubble in a square section, perhaps 12 feet tall with a staircase running up the middle of it to a lookout at the top. I scrambled up to get a view. We reckoned it was probably quite modern and perhaps a shepherd’s lookout.

Approximate coordinates only

Continuing up the track, which began to get steeper, we eventually found dolmen 5.

It has a very good chamber still embedded deeply into the rubble cairn and a superb really flat capstone sloping hard at 20 degrees towards the back. Very nice!

In Bruno Marc’s book ‘Dolmens and menhirs of the Ardeche’ we spotted a number of interesting monuments listed in the Bois des Geants along a single track which didn’t look to arduous for a non-walker like me!

Not recommended, but I drove up a gravel and bedrock limestone track for as far as I could before the really big rocks threatened to damage our ordinary large family saloon (a Mazda 626). We eventually had to park up and walk through the woodland and scrub which smelled of herbs and hot pine resin.

On the map we saw six monuments marked, though we only found three.

Please be aware that due to difficulties in spotting stuff on google maps, the PRECISE location of each monument maybe out by a few metres – the track that they are on is the right one, however. Please note that the track you need to go up is to the west of the bridge that crosses the combe.

Approximate coordinates only

The first dolmen you come to is not far after you pass under crackling powerlines.

This is a small dolmen, following the usual pattern from dolmens round these parts. It has lost its capstone, but the shape of the little box which remains is still worth a view and it has plenty of original rubble. A nice even pair of portal stones still stand to mark the entrance. It’s right by the side of the track so you won’t miss it.

Near Bidon, to the north of the Ardèche gorge, is the dolmen de Champ Vermeil, a vast and beautiful dolmen of just five huge slabs lurking in the woods, the capstone gently sloping at an angle of 15 degrees towards the back entrance. The capstone is massive and quite flat and a single slab makes up one side. Very impressive!

About 300ms away from Le grand dolmen de Ferrusac, again just off the D130 road, is the Petit dolmen de Ferrusac. As the name suggests it’s much smaller and not a double decker like its large sibling, but it still has a detectable passageway in front and plenty of rubble- and tell-tale black lying around.

This one is very sweet and so tiny!

Around Ferrusac there are other monuments including four good menhirs, made of white limestone.

Access: Just visible through trees from the D130. For this one and many 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 1.5km, taking a right fork south, to La Vacquerie(-et-St-Martin-de-Castries) on the D9.

Pass through the village and carry on for a short distance to the D130 left (east). Take this for around 2km, probably a bit less, keeping you eye out for a glimpse of a dolmen in the trees to the left (north) of the road. You may also spot a ruined tumulus. (We didn’t, but I forgot to look for it.)

Visited Wednesday 5 September
Wow, what a dinky dolmen! I’d assumed it was just called that to distinguish it from the Grand Dolmen!

Standing in the remnants of its mound, this is a more ‘standard-looking’ structure than the Grand Dolmen just up the road. It appeared to us to have traces of a passage.

Actually, we would probably have missed it if not for an elderly French couple we met when we overshot to the Grand Dolmen, who managed clarify Bruno Marc’s directions in Dolmens et Menhirs en Languedoc et Roussillon, despite our pidgin French and them not speaking any English....

And inside the tiny dolmen was an even tinier ‘model’ dolmen. We saw loads of these in the south of France, near real ones. Must be a local megalith-spotter hobby. I’ve only ever seen a couple in this country (& a tiny model stone circle on the path to a stone circle in County Cork).

In the area there is also a huge necropolis (at La Roque aka Laroque) and there are a couple of other more ruined dolmens very near St Pierre-de-la-Fage. The St Pierre dolmens are covered in the Bruno Marc book mentioned above. The necropolis is covered in his snappily titled Statues-Menhirs et Dolmens des Sausses et du Haut Languedoc. We didn’t have time for everything and chose to target what seemed the more striking places.

Access: See the Petit Dolmen de Ferrusac (which we would probably have missed if not for an elderly couple we met at the Grand Dolmen!) The Grand Dolmen is around 300 metres further along, also on the left. Reasonably easily visible through bushes and small trees from the D130.

Visited Wednesday 5 September
Like the similar Dolmen 1 de Coste-Claude, this one had been fascinating us ever since we saw a photo, as it looks like a double-decker dolmen! As with Coste-Claude, it’s actually a passage grave where the chamber is considerably taller than the passage, creating a strange overall impression.

A very impressive monument, noticably larger than Coste-Claude, slightly ‘tattier’ and marred somewhat by a concrete slab used to replace one of the side slabs of the upper part of the chamber.

There are several outcrops of rock immediately to the north of the dolmen, and even some suitable slabs of rock that could surely have been used instead, but I dare say there are reasons why concrete was used....

Perhaps those slabs may be the remnants of other monuments? In Dolmens et Menhirs en Languedoc et Rousillon, Bruno Marc certainly says that there is a menhir in the trees behind, 50 metres to the NW and another (fallen and broken in two) 80 metres to the NE. Not sure if he means 80 metres from the dolmen or from the from the ‘50 metre’ menhir.... We didn’t have time to go looking.

There are certainly several menhirs to the east – 4 that we found: Menhir de la Levade, Menhir de la Cisternette, Menhir 1 du Coulet and one which I guess is Menhir 2 (?) du Coulet.

With the Petit Dolmen just down the road, the area seems to have been a fair old complex of monuments.

Le grand dolmen de Ferrusac is a whopper, built with two levels of capstones, leading into one tall chamber beneath the top deck capstone. One side has been restored with an ugly concrete slab which takes a bit of the ‘wow’ away, but the original capstone and side slab are vast. Each perhaps weighing 20 tones a piece of more. A mighty place!

Driving north and east of Lodeve up a very twisty-turny mountain lane we reached the Priory St Michel de Grandmont – our main attraction here is this fabulous dolmen in its private grounds.

The entrance fee of E4.50 entitles you to look round the abbey (which has got a nice cloister and worth a peep) but you also get a guided tour to the dolmen. They don’t let you go on your own we think because of the resident herd of fallow deer roaming free and they don’t want hunters taking potshots and poaching. Despite having to drive such a long way to get here from our gite in Arles, having to pay an entrance fee and having to be escorted to the dolmen, it’s all worth it because its FAB.

A true Beauty. A capstone with exquisite flatness on its underside, such lovely stones leaning jauntily inwards are all surpassed by the charming catflap door in the portal stone. We had little time here (an elderly Belgian couple were escorted there at the same time as us) and so I immediately got to work drawing. It made me think about its picturesque loveliness of places like Poulabroune, combined with the startling wondrousness of the dolmens we’d seen on that hot Jordanian hillside two years before. This dolmen has been christianised – the monks at the abbey carved as small cross into one of the side stones.

In the middle ages the dolmen was used in a bizarre way to cure leprosy. The monks would burn the clothes of the afflicted person, who would then climb up on the dolmen and twice roll around and rub their skin on the capstone. Such hocus pocus! Is it any wonder that I put my faith in science and not witchcraft?

On our way up to Lodeve from Montpellier we stopped at the Dolmen de Pouget (also known as Gallerdet). It’s about a mile up a dirt road out of the village and is well signposted. We drove our large family saloon (4x4s not required) up a dirt road to the end of the track until our way was barred by a gate, so we parked up and got out and walked.

It was only 25 metres away around to the right if you follow the path past a couple of menhirs. The monument is built on a raised natural platform and still has lots of its own mound material too.

This dolmen is BIG and the first thing you notice apart from it’s size and commanding position is the arched porthole cut in the portal stone. This is well within the mound and reached by way of a sunken passage. The internal chamber is whopping, perhaps 6ms by 4ms, and covered by three lumpy pieces of limestone capstone. The arched portal stone has split, but been reconstructed, assisted by metal rods which you hardly even notice. The ‘n’ arch is great.

I sat on the ground and made a little sketch of the entrance.

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.