The photo doesn't do it justice. The site was pulsating, glistening, sparkling, never quite witnessed anything like it, huge contrast to my previous visit
Roche-aux-Fées
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Last time I visited the site was quiet busy, today I had it all to myself and if felt alive, as if it was breathing, changing colour, noisy with the wind and the rain running off the trees and the splash of mud as you walked around
Come in she said, I'll give ya shelter from the storm
For maybe ten minutes we had the place to ourselves, for this place that's an age.
It's back side is big and wide.
Ex chamber stones within the enigmatic chamber .
Getting a bit crowded now, so toodle-oo.
Thursday 14 April 2005 If it wasn't so goddam big & heavy, that capstone/lintel on the right would seem precarious!
Taken on a motorhoming holiday .June 2003
Taken Summer 1996: Looking down the Allee-Couverte.
Taken Summer 1996: La Roche-aux-Fées in the shade of oak trees on a very sunny day.
Taken Summer 1996: Looking up the side of the chamber. Note the variance in the heights of the orthostats supporting the capstones.
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Roche-aux-Fées
Allee-CouverteHaving just come from Champ Dolent menhir we had by necessity to get round the town of Rennes, this proved to be a challenge of considerable size, I have since become convinced that the French have arranged there road system in such a manner as to utterly confound the foreign traveler, perhaps in response to the conflicts of the previous century. But in the end we found our way out of Rennes and going in the right direction, then we got lost again. How i HATE DRIVING IN FRANCE.
After much, no, prolific growling, swearing and head smacking we got to our destination.
The car park has, since my last visit 11 years ago, shrunk by half, in order to erect a none necessary visitor shop and information hub. Really not needed, but at least they haven't started to take money off us.
There was only one car in the car park and the owner was in the shop, so, superbly we had the monument to ourselves.
This was my favorite place last time we came here and it was highly essential that I come back next time I was here.
It really has it all, the stones used seem to be perfect for the job, the size of the whole construction is massive to say the least. The inside is high enough for Masai warriors to do their bouncy dance, heck it's big enough to drive a car through. The entrance stones are stunning, I sat against a tree for some time staring in disbelief at it's perfection. Then some people came, just about the only buzzkill that I find it hard to cope with, then a load came all at once. Bugger, that'll be time to go then.
Winter solstice is the time to be here, at sunrise the the sun shines through the entrance and illuminates the interior, and presumably the gaggle of amazed megalithiticians as well, I hope to be one some day.
Roche-aux-Fées
Allee-CouverteOn our motohoming odyssey we saw more than twenty sites but this was the most spectacular. The car park was nigh on full because of a summer fayre or something (games, stalls, etc)
Yep there was lots of local people there but because they live with this Loire type dolmen they can almost ignore it and get on with the party. It was a beautiful summers afternoon the light shone through the leaves in that wonderful way that it does and all was perfect.
The entrance is amazing, the lintel is perfectly horizontal and low enough to make you stoop or bow to enter but then the capstones soar way above you. No finds of any kind were found here no burials or anything which just deepens the mystery surrounding this place. The entrance faces the mid-winter solstice
Roche-aux-Fées
Allee-CouverteFifteen miles or so to the south east of the city of Rennes, near Essé is one of France's most famous prehistoric monuments: the super-sized La Roche-aux-Fées.
Well-signposted from the main roads and now with its own small village close by, this colossal construction is more megalithic hall than over-sized allée couverte. Indeed, the size of its groundplan is pretty much the same size as the ground plan of our house.
We've all seen pictures in guidebooks and on the telly of famous iconic buildings throughout the world; the Taj Mahal, the Alhambra Palace, the Giza Pyramids, Angkor Wat, and so on. But just like all those places, the familiarity with them doesn't lessen the impact when you stand face-to-face with them.
And so it was for me at La Roche-aux-Fées on this miserable chucking-it-down April day. It is jaw-droppingly vast; made up of 40 giant slabs of purple cambrian schist, obtained from at least 5kms away. Its six gigantic capstones weigh between 40 to 50 tonnes each. Surely this wasn't only ever a tomb? Today it wasn't.
Today it served as a wonderful and roomy shelter from the pelting rain, a place for me to sit, think quietly and sketch; have a cuppa and feel its stones enclose me and protect from the dreary outside world.
The large car park suggests hundreds of visitors come here in good weather but today it was almost entirely ours. I wasn't going to be rushed here. Feeling safe and dry inside, I got out my paints and make a little sketch. I loved the way the damp stones glistened in the wet and made the massive slabs hanging above my head seem to loom even larger still.
Roche-aux-Fées
A hunter was pursuing a deer one day. Over hill and dale he chased, never getting any nearer to it, although he repeatedly galloped faster. At last, drawing his bow, he shot an arrow at it, exclaiming, "Should you be the devil himself I will pursue thee till eternity."Certainly not the usual Victorian language, but still revelling in Druidic gruesomeness: The Midnight Hearse and more Ghosts by Elliott O'Donnell (1965).
The deer struck by the arrow halted at the entrance of the dolmen and turned into a maiden of dazzling beauty.
"Have thee thy wish," she cried. "Thou shalt hunt for ever."
She vanished and the huntsman, it is said, may still be seen careering madly on a white horse, bow in hand, after an invisible quarry.
Another story relates to the days of Druidism.
It was the custom of this particular sect of Druids to offer up to the sun human sacrifices two or three times a year. Usually the victims were criminals or prisoners captured in war.
On one occasion the larder of victims was bare – not a criminal, not a prisoner of war. One of the priestesses who did the butchering was a young and lovely girl.
"No victims," she said. "Then you shall have my youngest brother."
Screaming with horror the boy was placed on a flat altar stone in the mouth of the dolmen and the priestess sharpened her knife in anticipation of the cruel deed entrusted to her.
The boy pleaded in vain for his life.
"Were you God himself I would kill thee," his sister said.
Just as she was about to plunge her knife into his helpless body, he cursed her.
"May your soul be doomed to haunt this spot for ever," he cried.
Quite unmoved, she ripped his stomach open and then calmly and slowly cut his throat.
She did not survive him long. For her impious words and in fulfilment of his curse she was doomed to haunt for ever the Fairy Rock.
Tradition also has it that round the rock, with hands clasped, lovely fairy girls used to dance and sing nightly, when the moon was full and the stars shone brightly. On one occasion a country swain stood watching them and was so enraptured that he knelt down and worshipped them.
"Go home," they cried, "and see what awaits there."
He tore himself reluctantly away, and went home to find to his great surprise, a large box full of gold coins, a gift from the fairies. He was a rich man.
He spent his money quickly and when it was all gone, he visited the Fairy Rock night after night, but he never saw the fairies again.
Roche-aux-Fées
The Roche aux Fées is about six leagues S.E. of Rennes, and a mile and a half S. of Esse, and is situated in a field which takes its name from the monument, and is called the field of the Roche aux Fees..Yeah, yeah, those awful revolutionary peasants. p85 of the Foreign Quarterly Review v26 (1840/1).
.. Formerly a forest surrounded it. It was at one time preserved with great care; but since the revolution, much injury has been done to it by the wanton folly of the peasantry, who imagined that a treasure lay buried under it.
The eponymous fées are of course the Brittany fairies – and we shouldn't forget their husbands, the poulpicans.