Jane

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...

La Crau is a flat plain to the east of Arles, a landscape much beloved of Vincent van Gogh: rich farmland criss-crossed by canals, farmtracks and a railway line. To the north east are the Alpilles, a chain of limestone mountains, rich in bauxite. The first mountain is the Mont de Cordes which rises solitary from the plain and was once an island, and it’s overlooked by another limestone ridge of Montmajour, on which was built a huge ugly fortress of an abbey, which dominates the view. The area is not only significant for me from a Vincent van Gogh point of view, but also because it holds a number of important, secret, prehistoric sites. As we were to discover many of these were ‘acces interdit’.

There are five monuments in the so-called Arles-Fontvieille group (because they lie beteen Arles and Fontvieille): the grotte des Fees on the Mont de Cordes, the grotte de Bounias, the grotte de la source, the dolmen de Coutignargues and the grotte du Castelets. They are variously referred to as grottes, hypogees or dolmens in the various literature I can find (which isn’t much).

However, in what literature I can find, this seems to be a very important group of monuments which has been largely forgotten.

Glyn Daniel calls them ‘among the largest and most impressive chamber tombs in France’ which have yielded grave goods of ‘a rich a very important character’.

It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry when you’re faced with it! We’d seen a picture of it printed on the label of a bottle of beer the night before and been mightily amused. The reality of it is that it’s quite small – about 5’3”. Though how much the silly christians removed from its original size to fashion it into this bizarre cross is impossible to tell.

We set out early to find the allee couverte du Bois-Couturier near Guiry-en-Vexin. They have maps to show you how to find it at the prehistory museum in Guiry. You have to walk about 20 minutes through a forest, on reasonably good clearly marked paths, to find it. But when you have you’ll love it!

It was rediscovered in 1915 and excavated until 1919: 200 skeletons found as well as polished stone axes, tools and ceramic shards. It’s 8 ms long and 2 ms wide – I thought the proportions seemed quite odd compared with many allee couvertes we’d seen. Essentially it’s a sunken box entirely lined with drystone walling and covered with 4 capstones.

The most astonishing thing about it is the round and lovely porthole in the portal stone – quite perfect! I crawled through it and into the tomb. I sat inside to consider that that the round blocking stone ‘door’ was discovered during excavation, and in superb condition. It now lives in the nearby prehistory museum. It looks like a great saucepan lid, complete with handle.

This is a ‘Hollywood’ site by any standards.

La Pierre Turquaise is a big league A-list ‘Hollywood’ megalithic site! Nestled into mature oak forest, and with acorns raining down all around us, we sat drinking tea from our flasks and smoking a small cigar to help us relax and admire this lovely place. In 1842 it was nearly broken up to help pave Paris, would you believe and in 1985 it suffered a horrific explosive attack which badly damaged it. One of the stones was sheared off and the top piece lies near the allee couverte.

It’s 10.6 ms long and nearly 2 ms wide and despite the 1985 attack still has 2 mighty capstones. Its calm woodland setting reminded us of some of the hunebedden in NL. Hard hats required though, to protect yourself from all those falling acorns. That, or bring a piglet!

Just a few fields away from La Pierre Plate is the allee couverte de Blanc Val, which has lost all its capstones and now lies in a scrubby patch of thyme and weeds at the edge of a field near Presles.

Blanc Val has a complete set of internal orthostats lining what is essentially a stone box. At one end, the bottom half of the portal stone is still visible, with the semicircle of what was once a porthole entrance. Blanc Val is not a thrilling monument to see, but the fact that it’s still here and that traces of cement on it shows that someone recently gave a toss about it is good enough for me.

You can drive quite close on a dirt track on the edge of the woodland and take a path in. It’s quite near a ‘Poney-Club’. I don’t remember a signpost but this grid ref is correct.

It lies in the thick woodland of the Foret Domenial L’Isle Adam, and is a sunken length of megalithic drystone walling between orthostats, still bearing the weight of four capstones. At the portal end, a carved stone has a kennel hole in it which presumably once had a blocking stone. All round the allee couverte, which is fenced for protection, wild strawberry plants formed a carpet underfoot. A very nice monument.

In The Megalithic European, Julian pays little more than a double page spread of lip-service to the long, glorious island of Langeland off the southern coast of Fyn in Denmark, almost certainly due to lack of space in the book and time in the field.

The thing that doesn’t come over in Julian’s commentary is the sheer variety, intensity and close proximity of monument after monument in this small finger of land. It took us two days to do it justice.

The bridges to get there are mercifully toll-free and the rolling countryside on the island is more enchanting even than the rest of Denmark. Langeland is home to scores of bird species and hares and deer abound. The main town on the island is Rudkøbing which felt very strongly like a far less bleak Kirkwall.

It was Moth’s birthday and while we were waiting for our friends to join us for some lunch, we quickly zipped out to see Bjerrebygaard dolmen.

We arrived in blazing sunshine and galloped over the muddy field to reach the stunning monument, cluster of large stones, dolmens with giant capstones and six monster, gnarled ‘pantomime’ oak trees sticking out of a large mound. Very dramatic.

We spent some time enjoying it until the sky in the northwest darkened suddenly and a wall of weather closed in. We made it back to the car just in time as a full-on blizzard of hailstones pelted down.

Its pretty remote up here on the beautiful Djursland peninsula, just north west of Århus, but quite gorgeous. It’s the most beautiful part of Denmark I had yet seen. I wanted to see Poskær Stenhus – surely the most picturesque place in TME!

As we arrived the sun came out unbroken and I scampered about the monument like a happy bunny. Moth climbed the Tinghulen to get some height some photos and I, after speaking to a woman tending her horses (who, with the horse she currently tended had once lived in Lambourn) sat and found the view where the light was just right for me to paint.

Poskær Stenhus is essentially the skeleton of a monument exactly like Groenhøj – gorgeous pink kerbstones, bit of a passage, nice chamber complete with capstone, bob’s yer uncle. But the setting here is so very fabbie.

Rolling fields and hills, great views, green pasture, heathy bits – oooh! And the nicest thing it’s that somehow its all on a human scale. Nothing here is grand or majestic or mighty. It’s all rather comfortable and nice. I like that.

It should be noted that at Poskær Stenhus visitors will find excellent toilets, so for once, ladies, you don’t need to pee in the open and risk mooning as passers-by.

I even managed to make a sketch here. Happy Jane.

Groenhøj chambered tomb, near Horsens, is a perfect pincushion of a monument, not unlike the Great Cairn on Porth Hellick Down, Scilly, but bigger.

It has a continuous ring of handsome kerbstones and a good high grassy mound. Like so many of the monuments in Denmark, the stones are lovely sparkly pink and grey. It has a very narrow corridor which I probably could have wriggled through to reach the chamber but as it was wet underhoof and I was wearing my only clean pair of jeans so I didn’t bother. At its 1940 excavation, thousands of pottery sherds were unearthed here, the breaking of which was some kind of ritual associated with the use of the mound.

Today, under blue skies with big fluffy clouds and chaffinches darting around in the trees Groenhøj looked very ‘hygge’ (Danish for cosy).

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!

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.