Jane

Chateau Bû! What on earth is it??? Chateau Bû is caged up. Straight-jacketed. Probably for its own protection because it is insane. Without being able to get right up to it, walk round it, get into it, it’s hard to make any sense of it. It has a mound, perhaps two metres tall, with a chamber in it like a cairn. Then it has four uprights – a four-poster – plonked on top.

And then a bit of a cromlech at one end. I’ve seen a lot of old crumblies in my time, but this one I can’t fathom. You’ll have to see it for yourself.

For 200 metres westwards over the health from Chateau Bû lie a whole pile of monuments, some – quite literally – within spitting distance of each other.

La Croix de St Pierre are three nice-but-nothing-to-write-home-about burial chambers. Two are now little more than ground plans and the other is just a stone cist. However in the context of the St Just complex they simply add to the mystery.

We were about to leave Saint-Just and as I looked on the map, I noticed another monument marked very close by but not featured in any of the literature we had. We had to go and see if we could sniff it out. Without having a clue what it would be, we picked up a sign to a ‘dolmen’ and parked. Scrambling up a steep bank into some woodland punctuated with amazing natural rocks, we followed the path until … WOW! What a find! Treal allee couverte. An absolute beauty.

My first ever allee-couverte! And I wasn’t disappointed at all. Hidden away in the forest this was much longer than I expected and much squarer inside. On some of the stones in the terminal cell some little raised knobbly bits have been carved in lines. These are quite common around these parts. Someone somewhere considers these to represent pairs of breasts, but frankly I’m not convinced. Not a bit!

St Uzec menhir is just bizarre and thanks to the Christians, its ancient power now seems to glow more strongly. Some zealous twat in the 16th century decided to attempt to mute its pagan power by carving a crucifix on the top. All it does, however, is to make Christianity seem like a fly-by-night and pathetically bullying force. Still, the menhir is beautiful, striking and much larger than I had imagined at more than 8ms tall! I wonder how tall it was before the Christians got their dirty hands on it?

Over on the touristy island of Ile Grande, which you can drive over a causeway to, is this allée couverte which is rather pleasant being neither small or big, long nor short. Just yer average local allée couverte for local people. With it teeming with rain and completely free of any tourists, the best place to be was inside it. Me, allée couvertes, rats, drainpipes.

Just after you have driven over the causeway on the way back from Ile Grande is Prajou allée couverte which is much longer than Ile Grande allée couverte.

We were intrigued by the carvings on the inside of the end chamber which was cut off by a blocking stone. Moth crawled in for a better look. Two pairs of carved semi-hemispheres and a couple of long lines with dots running parallel have been interpreted as pairs of breasts by ‘experts’ – probably men – but I asked, could they not be testicles or even eyes? We were to keep seeing these odd carvings on stones all over Brittany…

We noticed this little chambered tomb at the roadside near Keryvon, we hadn’t been expecting it so it was nice little bonus site! Aubrey Burl calls it ‘unimpressive’ but I give it full marks for simply surviving, sandwiched as it is at the roadside before the land dips away onto the beach. The end of it is practically falling away onto the beach! Only one capstone remains up but I liked it a lot.

There are two monuments in the same field at Kerguntuil and they proved harder to find than I thought due to sh*tty, ambiguous roadsigns and an inadequately scaled map. I got very cross. Finally, as we located them, a pair of jays swooped down in front of us.

Kerguntuil dolmen is less of a dolmen and more of a large stone room at the roadside.

It was so tall inside that I could only just reach up and touch the *whopping* capstone. It has been shored up with walling on one side for stability. You get the impression it has been used for centuries as an animal shelter. Well, wouldn’t you? On the other side of the field, crouching now as part of a field wall is the Kerguntuil allée couverte.