Jane

I wanted to return to the great cairn of Barnenez because when we visited 4 years ago it was pouring with rain. Last week when we went it was sunny and dry – perfect!

Because it’s a big important monument with a visitor centre and a perimeter fence you have to pay a fee to get in. But it was Monday. And it was closed. Drat and double drat! It was 50miles from where we were staying and I didn’t want to drive all that way again. There was nothing for it but to try to find a way through the fence. (Don’t try this at home, kids!)

So we walked up the lane a bit and made our way through the fields inspecting the high barbed wire perimeter fence. It looked impenetrable. Another field. Another length of fence. Right around the back of the monument, three fields away from the visitor centre we found a place under some trees where the fence had already been breached, presumably by other Monday visitors. So we scrambled through the dense low trees and got in! It felt a bit naughty and I’d much rather have paid my 5euros to be honest.

We walked around the vast monument admiring its wonderful layers, chambers and superb stonework, revelling in the luxury of seeing in sunlight, the shadows revealing it bulk even more. To me, of all Brittany’s megalithic treasures, Barnenez is the greatest jewel of all.

Just to the east of Quessoy, this unspectacular and a bit trashed monument is in a very rural setting on the edge of woodland. It’s got five capstones still up, so worth a look-see.

Only 500ms north of its twin Grand Argentel.

This fine monument is only about 500ms south down the lane from Allée couverte de la Couëte. It’s a reall beauty and not that easy find among the tangle of semi-rural lanes of the towns and suburbs south of St Brieuc.

We found the allee couverte ‘de la Vallee’ in the small open park area of a business park near the centre of Ploufragan town, on ‘Place Nelson Mandela’.

It’s 14ms long and has quite a complete passageway but only has 2 caps up and the third nearly up. It’s got an accompanying menhir which gives it a certain ‘je ne sais pas’.

This mighty menhir, known locally as the ‘miracle stone’, near Brignonan Plage is a whopping 8.5ms tall and had a silly little cross plonked on the top, probably in the Middle Ages. It’s also got a cross carved into it near the bottom.

There’s a naturally occuring shelf or notch about 5ms up the menhir which people try to throw pebbles onto. The story goes that if a young woman managed to get a pebble up there, she would be married within a year. I had a go at it and failed dismally. Moth was more determined and finally got one to stay up.

It’s well worth seeing because it’s such a monster.

On the northern side of the estuary of Quillimadec, near a hamlet called Larret, we found another, very denuded allee couverte on the beach.

There’s no doubt that this one is completely covered by the sea at high tide for seaweed clings of every part of every remaining stone as if it is wearing some kind of seaside camouflage.

It’s not nearly so impressive as Kernic to the east, but it does have two parallel rows of stones, a distinctive fallen capstone and a unique ambience.

We’d seen the skeletal remains of Kernic in books and always been impressed with it, not least because it’s right on the beach, and at high tide gets (mostly) covered by the sea.

As sea levels have risen since ancient times, it’s left Kernic stranded (in the literal sense of that word, at the strand line), so you can only see all that is left of the monument at low tide.

Climb down from the dunes and among the tethered boats on the beach, below some rocky tors overlooking the estuary, the ‘bones’ of the monument are easy to spot; the passage and some kerbstones.

The mound and capstones have long ago been washed away and seaweed covers the lower portions of the stones. It’s very cool. A must-see.

We were actually looking for Coat Menez Guen (which we never found although we must have been within inches) but found this, Coat Luzuen instead.

Having found this one, still thinking it was Coat Menez Guen, we struggled to make sense of Aubrey Burl’s notes about it in ‘Megalithic Brittany’ before realising he was describing a completely different monument.

Coat Luzuen is a grand, if neglected monument standing near the edge of field. There’s a little break in the hedge for you to get through to reach it. From what we could see through the tangle of vegetation surrounding it, it had two large flat capstones, one I guessed was 4 or 5 ms long.

You could get it to its quite big chamber easily and I sat in there for a while, out of the drizzle, looking at the tendrils of ivy curling their way around the stones.

This allee couverte is another of the rare arc-boutee type. We liked it very much, standing at the lane side, it even had a picnic table. It’s in very good condition and very well kept.

In Aubrey Burl’s ‘Megalithic Brittany’ he calls it Goulet-Riec. And Pierre-Roland Giot calls it Kernediec. I’ve called it Kerantiec because that’s what it said on the sign. I’m sure it answers to all three.

Here’s a nice neat one, just south of Moelan sur Mer, standing in a little field which is slightly higher than lane level so it makes it look bigger. It’s got it’s own accompanying menhir which is 2.5ms high, just a couple of metres away from one end. Easy to find, too!

This 17m long allee couverte is on a field edge very close to Moelan sur Mer in a semi-rural position.

It’s got a tree growing out of one end which isn’t doing the monument much good; many of the stones have moved about and it’s a bit trashed, but overall it’s not bad. Nice big capstones, too.

This is another of those rare allee couvertes built in the arc-boutée style, that is, with slabs leaning inwards like a house of cards or tent.

It’s nowhere near as good or spectacular as Ty ar Chorriket, another arc-boutée allee couverte we saw the week before. Each individual slab is really big but the whole monument has fewer stones and lacks the complexity or completeness.

Its situated on the highest hill in the area and views from up there are marvellous. There’s a grassy farm track that leads up to it and enough room to turn your car around at the top to avoid the tedious 1200m walk.

This little gem is right up on the north coast and worth seeking out for its compact neatness. It’s well-kept and well-tended in its own parcel of land on the edge of the village of Loguivy de la Mer.

It has lost its kerbstones and anytrace of mound, but 9 capstones are still up, an it appear to have all its uprights. It’s even got its original lateral entrance. The stones are not large, but the overall building is lovely.

This is an exceptional monument, utterly spectacular actually! It’s essentially a long barrow, 28 ms long, with a magnificent central passageway 15.8ms long. You enter from one side. It still has lovely kerbstones and plenty of high mound, up to a metre high in places.

It’s got lovely drystone walling between the kerbstones, a side entrance with original portal stones, outliers, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. Who could ask for anything more?!

Burl’s instructions on how to reach it, in our copy of ‘Megalithic Brittany’ were 24 years out of date. It’s now in a hamlet largely gobbled up by the northern ‘town-creep’ of St Quay and at the back of an ugly out-of-town strip of garages, car lots, plumbing centres and gardening emporiums.

This is profoundly weird. If anyone is in any doubt that Christianity is any more than just an iron age idol-worshipping death cult, then they should come here.

This allee couverte has been completely integrated into the chapel and now forms its crypt. You can get into it through a little iron gate, but obviously you can’t see it’s original exterior shape anymore because it’s been swallowed up by the church.

The stones are massive and would have to be to (partially) take the weight of the chapel built over it.

Now it’s been reduced to a cave-like hidey-hole for seven crudely carved dollies, paint peeling and faded. Seven tacky wooden figures of third century Turkish saints who were drowned each stand about a foot high behind a wooden fence so you can’t reach them. Or were they the seven dwarfs? There’s even a little toy boat, presumably to remind people of the way the saints died. I actually counted eight dollies – perhaps one of them was Snow White, I wondered? No, no, it must have been the virgin Mary.

The resemblance of the figures to the kind of idols you find in animist religions in West Africa and Papua New Guinea was striking and made all the more powerful by their position in this ancient monument. Definitely worth seeing for the weird-factor alone.

This one’s not that easy to find, but if there’s only one menhir you see in Cotes d’Armor, make it this one. Look out for a small woodland track off the lane – it is signposted though not conspicuously.

It’s 8.5ms tall and has a circumference of 12.5ms. That’s one helluva big chunk of stone! It dwarfs the piffling little menhir of only 2ms standing a few metres away from it. Curiously uneven, it morphs into different shapes as you move around it.

Stand close to it and you’ll be amazed at how tiny and insignificant you feel. Apparently its the third largest menhir in Brittany, and is 7,000 years old (so my guidebook says).

It dominates its little woodland glade and it absolutely loved it!

Although they are a long way apart it seems to form an alignment with Kerguezennec and Pedernec menhirs.

Well, it’s a big one, make no mistake, standing 6.25ms tall. From the front and back it seems enormously chunky, but from the side it’s much thinner and tapers off dramatically towards the top.

Toul an Urz means the ‘bear hole’, surely a reference to when our ursine friends still roamed the nearby forest.

One of the three remain capstones, the thinnest and largest, slopes right down to the ground. Whether it originally did so is hard to say – unlikely I’d have thought.

Traditionally, girls wanting a husband would slide down the stone. Surely they’d have been better off speed-dating?!

Hidden in among a field of tall maize, we almost missed this one entirely.

North of Cleguerec and west of Mur de Bretagne.

A grand, if a little ruinous, monument on the edge of the Foret de Quenecan, on high ground with superb views over the lower ground of the Blavet river valley out the the east.

Bot er Mohed means the fairy grotto apparently.

It’s a bit trashed on one side and you can’t get into it anymore due to undergrowth and jumbling up of stones, but it still looks good and complete. There seems to be no stones missing. On one side there is a wall of seven continuous large slabs.

Near le Quillio by the neat and soul-less 19th century chapel of Notre Dame de la Lorette are 27 standing stones, possibly a cromlech (in the French sense of that word) that is, a horseshoe.

Today the fine stones of quartz and schist appear to be arranged in two parallel lines, 20ms long and 8ms wide, I’m guessing.

The strange juxtaposition of these ancient unhewn and rough stones against cloyingly sweet and nauseating tributes in the chapel to the ‘miracles’ performed by the virgin is very peculiar.

About 10 minutes drive from Mougau is this monument that is not to be missed if you’re travelling across Brittany.

On the northern outskirts of the village of Brennilis is a real beauty this real beauty: Ty-Ar-Boudiget chambered tomb. It’s essentially an allee couverte, but with a complete kerb and an earthen barrow, and stands much as it must have done after it was built.

It reminded us of the many similar more complete jættestue and høj monuments to be found in Denmark and at D49 Schoonoord in the Netherlands. But round here to find a monument in this condition is a rare thing. How it escaped being denuded like all the rest I don’t understand, but I’m so glad it did.

On the drive back up to our cottage in northern Brittany, we took a minor detour through Les Monts d’Arree, to find the magnificent allee couverte of Mougau Bihan. I’d seen it in various books and regularly dribbled over it. Now it was time to see it!

It’s on the edge of the village of Commana, resting quietly in a meadow under some apple trees. It’s obviously a popular monument because it even had it own car park.

It’s 14ms long and is to my eye at least as near a perfect ‘classic’ allee couverte as you could wish for, with one long chamber, a terminal cell and five contiguous capstones. Several of the uprights have been carved inside with stylised axes, crooks and so on. I found it easy to imagine the whole of the inside of the tomb painted with umbers and ochres in lines and random shapes. (I have no evidence for this, by the way...)

As we admired this spectacular construction, I found it slightly unnerving to be whistled at continuously by an African grey parrot hopping around in a cage outside a farm cottage next door.

This handsome beast is six metres tall (although it seems taller) and standing, somehow, among flat bedrock outcrops. We could get right up to it, and today it was glowing warm with sunshine. It’s an absolute beauty, really chunky and thick. It feels sooo heavy. How they hell they cut it, moved it and raised it I can’t imagine. Nearby on some of the outcrops are cup marks.

Paddling in the marsh at the back of dunes, alongside egrets and herons, the menhir du Lehan stands 6.5ms tall. It would be a pretty ordinary sort of menhir anywhere else around here, but with its feet in the water it looked great.

I think in the end we stumbled across the Kerfland alignment – I know we asked at a farm and an old blokey told us to go left and left again, pointing roughly in the direstion we needed to go. There might have been a sign; anyway, we found them down a path off a narrow lane and they were well worth it.

Among the trees stand 3 tall menhirs about 3 or 4ms tall stand very close together, perhaps on 1 or 2ms apart. Each stone was a broad flat blade, weathered at the top and they were lined up in a row, narrow edge to narrow edge. They reminded me a lot of the stones at Stenness.

At Quélarn, near Plobannalec, we found a complex site with all kinds of monuments going on: cists, chambers, and dolmens abound. There are three passage graves, all of which are quite trashed, and it takes some imagination to ‘rebuild’ them in your mind.

Perhaps less than 1km from Lestriguiou the Menez-Landu dolmen at Kerdanno also hangs out at the roadside, but this time actually on the main D785. It’s actually hidden away in thick gorse about 10 metres back from the road opposite a creperie.

It’s a very pleasing and simple construction; 3 big uprights and a cap.

We found it just hanging out in a dense wooded hedge down a lane just north of the D785. A nice passage, big stones and two capstones.

It’s at the far side of a field which is clearly marked ‘Private Property’ so we didn’t venture too close, but even from a distance we could see it was really big – 9 ms tall – and dramatic. It has a wider splaying top, down which run deep ridges formed from weathering. From the side you can see it’s actually wedge shaped. Whether it was originally like this, or it is just weathering that has caused this wedge shape is hard to tell.

It’s one of the largest menhirs in Penmarc’h.

Now clearly ‘La Musee Prehistorique’ is not in itself a prehistoric monument, but the sheer number of prehistoric monuments which have been saved and re-erected in its grounds make it worthy of inclusion on the website – and not just as a ‘facility’.

I’m not going to list them all, because there are so many – cists, menhirs, dolmens, stele, and get this, the complete restoration of an entire allee couverte which was saved from destruction and rebuilt here, stone by stone.

Address:
Musée de la Préhistoire Finistérienne
657 Rue du Musée Préhistorique
Pors Carn
29132 Penmarc’h

Phone: 02 98 58 60 35 / 06 83 54 63 39

Easy parking opposite.

It’s in a very dramatic setting, right up on a little headland, sticking out between two wide sandy beaches popular with surfers. It’s next to a massive concrete structure which was probably some kind of war emplacement. As well as a central passage it’s got five chambers; they’re a bit difficult to ‘read’ as the monument is in some state of disrepair, but it’s well worth going to see it for it’s gorgeous seaside location alone.

In the fields by a bucolic lane near Plomeur, the Kerugou dolmen is actually a dinky T-shaped passage grave with two chambers at the far end of the passage. Its still got one capstone up which looks at first sight like two because of the way it has been restored. The whole monument stands proud; the lane passing it is at a lower level than the field its in so as you approach it looks much bigger than it actually is.

I noticed a strange smooth round cylindrical stone right next the monument lying on its side. It was in the unmistakeable shape of a giant penis. None of the books or info I can find about this site mentions it at all. Very weird.

Perched dramatically on the rolling clifftops overlooking the beach and harbour it’s a bit too perfect now, but hey there’s a good reason and at least it’s still here.

When it was excavated various objects were found; cremations, pottery, weapons, tools, jewels and even bits of glass. More recently, as with so many monuments, it was robbed for building materials but many of the large stone still survived. During the second world war its position on the clifftops almost became its undoing as it obstructing the visibility of a coastal battery, so it was dynamited! Thankfully the local people wanted it restored, and so it has been, into the monument we see today but it feels more like a strange park-bound folly.

It’s big at 10.8ms long with 16 uprights, some of which are overlapping or louvred which I thought was a bit unusual. You can walk right into it without stooping.

This menhir at Plozevet church is still being used. It’s been incorporated into a war memorial. Accompanied by a statue of a soldier and the carved names of all those young men from Plozevet who died during two world wars, this mighty 4.5m tall menhir rises above it all. It somehow gives the memory of all those chaps an extra poignancy. I like to think that the original function of the menhir may have been to mark some great Neolithic warrior chief whose name is lost in time. But in remembering his modern Breton brothers we remember him.

It’s about 12ms long and with five large capstones the largest over 2ms long, and still has plenty of mound, which we liked.

Don’t be confused by the interchangability of its name. Many places round here have multiple names, both French and Breton, but also folkloric names. Kerbalanec is the name of the hamlet on the road sign, and in one or two books we’ve got. Aubrey Burl in his 1984 edition of ‘Megalithic Brittany’ calls it Kerbanalec, as does the blokey on the Megalithes Breton website: megalithes-breton.fr

Well, whatever it’s called it’s the same place.

The allée couverte of Ty ar Chorriket, near the hamlet of Lesconil, is built in a very unusual style of which only half a dozen or so examples are known. This ‘arc boutée’ style involves two rows of slabs leaned in towards each other to form a tent-like structure or house of cards, perhaps in the way that Ray Mears might build a forest bivouac.

Six or seven large triangular(ish) slabs down each side lean in to form a dramatic passage 12ms long. It’s even got some of its original kerbstones and enough of its barrow material left to get a really good impression of its spectacular size.

I liked to think that the pointy tops of the stones might have protruded through the top of the barrow. Now how cool would that have been to see?

Spectacular and worth driving a long way to see.

Now isolated on a lonely crossroads (it stands in the middle of the crossroads) this menhir of about 2.5ms tall is a rounded pillar. It is probably quite different from its original form, and felt very much to us as if it had been tinkered with, rounded and sculpted into a more innocuous stele than a heathen menhir of the ‘old’ religion. That’s happened a lot to many stones in Brittany.

Like at Poulyot we saw the sign but couldn’t immediately see it. Moth noticed something lurking 50ms away from the laneside to the right at the edge of a field of tall maize (I thought it was old farm equipment) but he got out to have a closer look. And there it was.

A tight group of uprights leaning inwards like the swords of the three musketeers support a really square and flat capstone, just like a rustic table. It was richly veined with quartzy stripes, which is surely the reason why this stone was selected for this purpose.

This is a very simple and small dolmen of three stones holding up a capstone. It sits on a small bank at the laneside in the hedgerow on the edge of a pretty hamlet near the main road.

On a spectacular high rocky, heathy promentary facing west once stood some more alignments at Lostmarch. Now there are very few left, but enough to interest the more anorakky megalith-hunter, including a couple of very large menhirs. The beach to the south was obviously a favourite with surfers, catching the great Atlantic rollers. The whole place reminded me a lot of Rhossili on the Gower.

Here 84 bright white quartzy stones of varying shapes are lined up on their parade ground, a sandy heath by the sea. The tallest is 2.5ms, but on average about they’re about 1.8ms. The principal alignment is about 200ms long running NE to SW and has two shorter rows running away from it to the west. It feels incomplete (was this once a quadrilateral? Did the lines run further – I bet they did) but no less beautiful or impressive for that.

They don’t overwhelm the visitor like the squillions of stones Carnac, instead they invite you to almost be part of them, to line up with them and join in the fun.. The whole shebang is on a human scale and had an ambience of Callanish about it. And with the bright sunshine casting long shadows on the dewy grass it felt very like this monument was something to do with telling the time, the seasons and calendars.

They are worth the trip out as far west as this. Absolute magic.

Oh la la, it’s big. Very big. They say the tallest still standing menhir in the world. And I can believe it. It’s 9.5ms, for goodness sake! That’s 31 feet in old money. And it used to be taller still! A lightning strike a couple of centuries ago knocked 2ms off the top apparently. Quite apart from its sheer dizzying height, it is a curious shape; not even and slender like most of the menhirs, but wider than it is thick.

It has two curious sticky-outy hemispherical lumps carved on either side, each about the size of half a football. Each is at about belly height. I could well imagine superstitious people wanting to increase their fecundity coming to the menhir to rub their abdomens on the lumps in the hope of getting babies. They’d have been better off just having sex…

Kergadiou menhirs are a pair: the standing one (or should I say towering?) is 8.75ms tall and an utter beast! Some books say it’s the second tallest menhir in Brittany.

Eighty metres away in the same field, its partially fallen twin is no less impressive. Lying like a beached whale at perhaps 25 degrees, like a giant sundial, it is an unbelievable 11ms long – 11ms! It is less of a menhir and more of a runway on an aircraft carrier. It simply invites you to run up its flat surface and stand on the summit from where there’s a good 4m drop to the ground.

After having seen what was beginning to feel like a million menhirs in a matter of minutes (such is their frequency) the sight of a dolmen was too good to miss. It wasn’t clear where the dolmen was; all we had was the sign by the field edge and we couldn’t see it at all. Moth stomped off down the field anyway – surely we’d bump into it. But we didn’t.

The maize in the next field was tall and ready for harvest. Moth stood on a rock to gain height and survey the landscape. It was only by getting this extra height that Moth could see Poulyot’s capstone. I was standing only metres away from the dolmen but couldn’t see it for the crop. We scrambled over the brambly field boundary. The farmer had helpfully left an uncropped section so we could reach it this dreamy dolmen easily.

And four large granite slabs of picture perfect proportions sparkled in the September sun.

This is a very nice pair of menhirs standing 60ms apart in the same field. One measures 4ms and the second 3.9ms. Slender, finely and evenly shaped all the way to the top, like most of the menhirs here, each one seems to have four distinct sides.

The pair of menhirs at a fork in the road near St Denec are each individually relatively small for round here. One measures 3.2m, and the second 3.1m, but add that up and you have a total befitting of Finsterian menhirs! Small and pointy, they reminded us strongly of The Pipers. There’s also a fallen one of a measly 2.7ms, so once this was almost certainly an alignment.

The menhir of Kerhouezel has many names. I’ve also seen it called Kerdelvas, and in our 1984 edition of ‘Megalithic Brittany’ Aubrey Burl calls it Kerreneur. Well, whatever it’s called it’s another six and half metre whopper, very slim with four rounded sides and a gracefully tapering top.

As we were driving through the village of St Gonvel near Landunvez I spotted a ‘dolmen’ road sign. The monument wasn’t marked on our map, but as it was there on a plate, we got out to walk the 20 metres or so down a little track between gardens to have a shufti, stopping to admire a large chirping grasshopper en route. And what a sweet little dolmen it is, crouching low into the ground with a capstone like a Tintin quiff and of the same blondeness as the young Belgian adventurer. Very dinky and charming.