Jane

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.

We met the young and lovely Spaceship Mark in bright sunshine at the main car park by the Kermario alignments. His pockets were bulging with detailed maps and a much-loved copy of Burl’s ‘Megalithic Brittany’. Mark was living and working in a campsite literally just opposite the alignments. Now that would be a great place to have your hols!

The alignments are particularly complete here and consist of some really big, tall stones. We stopped to admire them and to see the Lann Mané dolmen which lies just next to them close to the road.

The alignments are not open for visitors to walk amongst during the summer months so we couldn’t actually get in. This didn’t spoil my enjoyment at all; a clear view unsullied by visitors was good enough for me.

It is IMPOSSIBLE not to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale and obsession of menhir erection here. It’s truly astonishing!

We thought we’d have a go and look for some monuments we’d spotted on the map at Belz, a seaside village a few kilometers away. We had only a not very detailed map and my megalithic radar to guide us. We subsequently discovered these don’t even feature in Burl’s ‘Megalithic Brittany’, so we were pleased to have found two of the three marked on the map.

Urban dolmens! I love ‘em. Forgotten but not gone, these dolmen at Belz (east) were actually two burial chambers.

Only one still has capstones up, the other, directly next to it, just has a few uprights left marking the line of the chamber. It is situated on high ground overlooking the sea on a village greeny area.

Survivors!!

We thought we’d have a go and look for some monuments we’d spotted on the map at Belz, a seaside village a few kilometres away. We had only a not-very-detailed map and my megalithic radar to guide us. We subsequently discovered these don’t even feature in Burl’s ‘Megalithic Brittany’, so we were pleased to have found two of the three marked on the map.

Driving around a bit around the village a bit, we located this Belz dolmen (west) up to its knees in soaking wet buttercups on a patch of land occupying an entire building plot among the houses.

Around the village of Erdeven are tons of goodies. Call me undedicated if you like, but the combination of the weather being so horrible, the lack of time for painting opportunities and the prospect of a very wet 2km walk to see more stuff, didn’t appeal. Moth, being a completist wasn’t going to miss a thing, so he set off from the car park at Erdeven and began his walk to take in the Kerjean alignments, Kerherzo alignments, Mane Braz dolmens, Coet er bein and La Chaisse de Cesar. I stayed in car, driving it up to a place to get a good view of the Kerherzo alignments.

I lit a fag, got out a flask of tea and my sketchbook and while munching on a pain au chocolat, made a little study.

Just about 500ms away from Crucuno quadrilateral up among some trees is Mane Groh dolmen – a lovely allee couverte with four transepted chambers and lots of capstones still up. A little stone cist, not unlike a water trough for horses, stands very close by.

The rectangle is a mystery to me. Like the rectangle at Manio, which we saw the day before, this is something that I couldn’t get my head around. Stone CIRCLES make more sense to me, partly cos I’ve seen tons of ‘em, so to see an alternative shape is very peculiar. The stones are large here (average of five or six feet high, I’d say) and the corners very precise. Recently cleared of its gorsey undergrowth I paced round it, trying to make sense of the lines and the corners and failing.

If you have copy of The Megalithic European and turn to pages 320 and 321, you’ll see a double page spread on a site called Torre Llisa Vell. Don’t be misled! What Julian is actually describing in this spread is the nearby So Na Caçana. So get yourself a pen, and retitle the page now!

In fact, the ‘real’ Torre Llisa Vell isn’t included in TME. Which is a shame, as it’s an all-singing, all-dancing taula sanctuary with talaiot. It is just a couple of fields away from So Na Caçana.

To find it, continue up the road from So Na Caçana towards Alaoir for about 1km at the most, until you reach a minor crossroads. Turn left here and drive 300ms until you see a gate on the left to a farm called Torre Llisa Vell. Walk down this lane for 100ms and ask the friendly old man at the farmhouse on the right for permission and directions. He doesn’t speak English, but Moth got the gist.

By now you will have already sussed that the great tree-covered lump on your left is an overgrown talaoit and if you look carefully, you’ll see the crest of what looks like a naveta beneath it on the northern side. Walk about 10 ms past the farmhouse and then turn left. After only a few metres the track enters an open field, but to the left is another short track only a few metres long. At the end and you’ll see a gate and a break in the on the right. Go up towards the gate and through the break in the wall. Can’t you already smell it? Walk 25 metres through long grass and a few trees until to th left, you see a huge wall with an archway. You’ll find the taula through that archway.

The wall enclosing the taula sanctuary is very complete indeed – I have no idea if it has been restored or not, it certainly didn’t look like it to me. It conforms to the standard ground plan of a horseshoe-shaped area with a slightly concave front entrance wall. In the case of Torre Llisa Vell the entrance is a beautiful corbelled arch through the wall which is an amazing 4ms thick. True!

Given that the entire sanctuary measures only – what? – 12ms in total, these walls seem totally out of proportion. They are also maybe 3ms high, so whatever went on within the sanctuary was not for general viewing. I also noted that the entrance passageway through the wall wouldn’t have allowed the entry of a fully grown bull.

At least not a modern bull. P’raps they were smaller then, or they only sacrificed calves?

The T itself is a chunky beast and completely dominates the internal space. The stone forming the top of the T being thicker, heavier and wider in proportion with the vertical stone than at any other taula we saw.

From the top of the wall, you could see the poblat of So Na Caçana lying directly south, just about 400-500ms away.

This is a truly resplendent monument! We were both completely blown away and so sorry that Julian missed it.