Latest Fieldnotes

We went to seek out what Dyer describes as: ‘a fine round dolmen with a central burial chamber and a ring of kerbstones’, the Baronens Høj. He should have just said: ‘it’s f*cking ace, Jane!‘

The setting, the construction, the character and the fact that the sun came out while we were there lifted my heart! What a beautiful place. It perches like a little crown 25 feet above the sea in a clearing which it shares with an old farmhouse.

It reminded me of Innisidgen on Scilly which ‘feels’ the same. Its immediate neighbour, the old farmhouse was that very distinctive shade of Danish yellow and its thatch was thickly covered in moss. When the sun came out it glowed green and bright – it felt like it was the first time I’d seen Denmark in colour. That was it. Time to get the paints out. At bloody last!

We’d spotted Nørreskov in James Dyer’s book ‘Discovering the Archaeology of Denmark’ and as we were so close thought we’d take a look even if we had already found Dyer to be slightly unreliable, banging on about finds and stuff rather than the monuments. (It’s always bloody pottery sherds and amber beads, too.)

Our first Nørreskov monument was at Frydendal Kro in the strip of woodland leading down to the sea. Here we found a rather cute little dolmen emerging out of a round barrow and right next to it, a short barrow (it wasn’t long) with a good stone cist in the top.

There were many others lurking in the woods like which went on for a few kilometres hugging the coast.

Suddenly it stopped raining and it looked as if even the sun might appear so we drove through the woods spotting birds (jays, anunidentified-but-mighty-raptor and a goldcrest!) and any suspicious humps with associated stones.

Blommeskobbel is tucked away in woodland off a muddy track – which thankfully you can drive to because it was raining again.

The trees gave some shelter but it was as damp and muddy and joyless as you could ever want. Blommeskobbel cheered me though. How could it not? The site consists of two langdysser and two round barrows, with good kerbing, nicely exposed chambers and lots of character.

I had looked forward to Blommeskobbel not just because the name sounds so cool and it means flower stones in Danish, but because when I first saw page 155 of Julian’s ‘The Megalithic European’ I knew it wouldn’t be long before I would have get to Denmark.

I would have liked to have painted here but it was too grey, too damp, too miserable. The weather was forecast to dry up later, but there was no sign of that as we headed up the coast a tiny bit from Blommeskobbel towards Nørreskov, 5 kms away.

It doesn’t look like very much until you are right up to it, because the bulk of the structure still lies below ground level, hidden under its whopping capstone. I dived straight in, to feel the space and the height and keep out of the rain. A large, ugly snail had had the same idea and lurked scarily on one of the giant uprights so I didn’t stay in for long.

It was about 6 o’clock. And I really, really, REALLY wanted to see the alignments.

We approached the alignments from the middle but Moth wanted to give me a total freak-out mind-blast by driving me along the road from one end all the way to the other to get a proper sense of scale for my first view, so I closed my eyes until we reached the very end at Menec. I could hardly wait for Moth to say: “open your eyes!”

Then came the command.

For as far into the distance that I could see were rows and rows and rows and rows of stones, stones, stones, stones! WOW. WOW. WOW.

Moth drove. Slowly. Menhirs galore snaked gracefully across the undulations of the land. And the stones kept on coming. More and more. A break in the lines for the road. Then more. A break for some trees (though there were still one or two peppering the verges). Then yet more. Some cottages. And more still. By this time we were at the Kermario alignments. A lake. And even more. After perhaps three kilometers they finally pierred-out. We turned the car around and drove all the way back to Menec to see them all again. I could’ve done that until nightfall.

We stopped at Menec hamlet which forms the western end of the main alignments to walk around the village which is neatly embraced within the horseshoe/circle of stones known here as a cromlech. it’s wonderful to see the stones snake their way through the village! Leaning on the fence barring my way into the alignments, I stared and stared, mouth agape gob-smacked by the alignments and watched as a stonechat landed on top of the nearest tallest menhir and sang his little heart out.

We drove the short way back towards Carnac passing the GARGANTUAN St Michel tumulus as we entered the village. It has a silly little chapel on top which only serves to make Christianity look very paranoid and rather pathetic. The ancient power of this tumulus dominates the landscape.

Not far from Kercadoret is tumulus Mane Lud which is well worth stopping at. It has a huge long mound, inhabited by what looked to me like redwoods. And they’re big buggers.

At the end furthest from the road is the chamber and it’s surprising! Go down a little staircase and you enter the passage and into the massive chamber. It has remarkable carvings on its wall slabs. OK, this ain’t Gavrinis, but at least you have time to study them! On the main slab at the back is a gigantic representation of a pair of ram’s horns. There are also wiggly lines, stripes, phalluses, crooks and axes, or at least I think that’s what they were. All housed underneath a MAMMOTH capstone which I paced out at 7 metres long on top.

Kercadoret dolmen. is such a ‘minor’ site here in this megalithic wonderland that it is not signposted. Julian’s instructions in TME are not exactly clear but eventually we managed to work out what the dear old hippy meant.

It’s a sweet, classic dolmen found en route down to the main drag to the Locmariaquer monuments and quite complete. If this was in the UK people would travel miles to see it. But here it feels quite forgotten.

It was time to head down to Larmor Baden village to catch the 3.30 ferry to see Gavrinis (cost in 2005: ten euros).

The ferry takes about a 15-minute chug across calm waters largely used these days for yachting and oyster beds. As we approached the southern end of the island of Gavrinis, I looked left to see the silhouette of some of the stones of the Er Lannic cromlech poking up.

With great anticipation I leapt off the boat and tore up the pathway towards to cairn. No bags, no cameras, no nothing can be taken in to the cairn and each tour is strictly guided and limited in both number and time. I sensed this was going to be frustrating.

Indeed it was. A guide, speaking only French, naturellement, began his talk. Being unable to follow French with any competency, I whizzed on ahead up to the cairn to admire its much restored façade of carefully laid stones, stepping up like a pyramid, with its little –locked – portal behind which held so much promise…

The group approached the cairn’s façade and the guide continued his talk. And continued. From what little I could follow he gave a potted history of the neolithique et âge de bronze which was probably quite good, but in my mind I was screaming: ‘shut the f**k up and let me inside, you bâtard!’.

Finally after perhaps 20 minutes he let half the group in. WOW. WOW. WOW. Swirls and spirals and waves and triangles and zigzags and lines and spots and bumps and WOW, WOW, WOW! Everywhere were the carvings; not just on one or two, but on practically ALL the wall slabs and even on the riser of the interior step into the slightly wider chamber at the end of the psychedelic passageway.

Imagine what this would have been like when it was painted- as it surely was. Everything else in antiquity was, after all. Think of all the Egyptian tombs and temples, Greco Roman statuary and so on. I could easily imagine the yellow and red ochres, ultramarine blues and umbers, chalks and charcoals swirling around in my mind.

The guide burbled on. I sat down to begin a sketch to try to study and understand some of the wild rhythms before my eyes. But, oh lâ lâ, I was asked to get out. Merde! I felt cheated and robbed. I’d only had ten minutes viewing.

On the ferry to Gavrinis, as we approached the southern end of the island of Gavrinis, I looked left to see the silhouette of some of the stones of the Er Lannic cromlech poking up.

God, I wish the guy driving the boat could have taken us round a bit closer. But one doesn’t like to ask the French for favours, does one?

On the way around the bay towards Gavrinis, we stopped to take in this monument, tumulus Kernours, near Bono.

This huge grassy mound, about the size of Duggleby Howe is built high up on a ridge among pine trees on the edge of the River d’Auray estuary. It has recently been tidied of gorsey undergrowth so much so that Moth, whohad been here before, didn’t recognise it. By now I was getting the hang of this Carnac-tumulus-visiting stuff so I grabbed the torch and entered swiftly and with the enthusiasm of a ferret in a warren. Just like Les Pierre Plats, the long, long passageway swings round, banana-style, to the left. Lots of gorgeous large flat wall slabs but no arty carvings in this one. Right next to the mound is the outline of another small cairn which reminded me hugely of the pincushion cairns up on Porth Hellick downs on the Scillies. As we grubbed around among the pines needly, gorsey paths we spotted a number of large stones. Erratics? Or something else? Who knows…

Hidden away among the homes of Locmariaquer village you’ll see the sign to Mané er Hroeuk tumulus. There’s a parking place right by it. This is a right big bugger of a mound and from what I could see rather untidy on the outside; there is no clear profile.

Steps have been constructed that lead down into the tomb. A short low passageway takes the visitor into a single large roughly round chamber. The chamber is lined with big slabs, but with no carvings that I could see. Above the wall slabs is a rough attempt at corbelling before the whole thing is topped with two giant capstones.

Moth insisted I see one in particular, knowing my mind would be blown by it. Les Pierres Plats is at the very southern tip of the Locmariaquer peninsula, now hidden away in the dunes overlooking the beach. Parking among the camper vans in the shade of the pines, a short walk of 300 metres takes you to the monument which heralds its existence in advance with a tall menhir poking above the gorse.

This amazing tomb is full of mega-surprises. Its little low portal leads into a long passageway which curves sharply round to the left. The total length must be 20 metres or so, but it never gets tall enough to stand up in. After five metres or so is a side chamber to the left. But keep going – you’ll need your torch – and you are rewarded with the most magnificent and surprising carvings on the great walling slabs. Something that looks like a fern leaf or a rib cage, another looks like a diagram of botanical cell, another looks like a phallus… Cup-marks be damned! THIS is rock art and you’ll wet your panties.

The outside of the mound is badly eroded, how much longer people should be allowed to walk around it and on it is debatable. Footfall is taking its toll.

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.

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.

Although Luffang allée couverte doesn’t have any capstones anymore is was intriguing, nevertheless. Now it is just a banana-shaped stone-lined trench, about 15 metres along. That banana-shape again. Just like Pierre Plates and Kernours tumulus. Weird.

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.

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!