Jane

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.