Jane

On the other side of the field from Kerguntuil dolmen crouching now as part of a field wall is the Kerguntuil allée couverte. It’s an average sized allée couverte and like so many round here has strange carved semi hemispheres on one of its wall slabs. Here, there are six pairs of them, on this occasion each pair has a smiley curve below them. Moth read them as pairs of breasts with pregnant bellies below. We read somewhere that they were pairs of breasts with necklaces. But, I ask you, have you ever seen a woman wear a necklace below her cherry-muffins? No. Me neither. Perhaps they did all those years ago and I’m being terribly naive. Anyway, this is a cracker over 9ms long and well worth seeking out.

I noticed another ‘ancient monument’ symbol on the map, not far from where we were at Treguier, but I had no instructions as to how to get there or indeed what was there. But we took the chance and went anyway. Happily, we picked up a signpost. As we parked, the heavens opened, but after the deluge we had suffered for most of the day this failed to move us; our shoes and trousers were already soaked to the thigh.

After walking through the dunes and the gorse out towards the sea we finally stumble across this allée couverte. It’s a bit trashed but its location is simply lovely overlooking the wide expanse of the estuary. Had it not been so wet, I could sat here for the rest of the day.

It had bigger, thicker stones than all the other allée couvertes we’d seen today further to the west.

This one

In the very beautiful mediaeval town of Treguier, just by where the bridge crosses the Jaudy river estuary you’ll find this cromlech opposite a hotel.

It now has its own little parkland to inhabit, but it wasn’t always so. This entire cromlech (or stone circle/horseshoe thingy) was relocated to its current position in 1963 for a reason I failed to discover. It used to have carved stones within it but these have been moved to protect them.

The Dolmen de Kergavat has a large chamber and some sizeable stones, but like so much stuff hereabouts is unceremoniously ignored. But here it is – a huge and beautiful dolmen – virtually playing chicken with passing traffic, parked at the roadside.

I do like urban monuments, so the Dolmens de Rondossec were always likely to appeal to me. Whoosh in the middle of the village of Plouharnel are a lovely pair of funnel-type passage tombs, still quite buried under their mounds. They both have low passages which widen to a larger end. In a garden just opposite we noticed a menhir which looked suspiciously original to us.

Julian calls it the Roh-an-Aod dolmen in TME, but the roadsigns point you to dolmen du Roch.

This very large dolmen occupies an entire plot in a small village setting, tightly squeezed on all sides by cottages and houses. We liked this one a lot as it so clearly refuses to be taken over by the human development around it. Defiant and wonderful.

Blimey! There’re some big buggers here. And according to the books, it’s not very long ago since the fields at St Barbe were littered with some pretty complete alignments. But 19th and 20th century activities felled many of them. Despite the driving rain, I had to get out of the car and walk right up to these stones. And I’m glad I did, because sometimes it’s not until you actually stand next to something you realise just how massive it is. The biggest stone of St Barbe is seriously whopping – have a look at TME and see just how teeny weeny Spaceship Mark* looks standing next to it.

*and he’s no short-arse!

I was looking forward to the sites in and around the village of Crucuno. The Crucuno dolmen is bang slap in the middle of the village, now looking more like an extension to a farm building these days, but no less impressive for it.

I made a little sketch of it while I sat in the car out of the rain while Moth went off exploring.

Julian’s instructions in TME to find this lovely horseshoe cromlech are unnecessarily complicated! Simply follow the path at the back of the Moulin de St Pierre alignments past the tennis court and turn left at the top. About 50 metres in front of you, under the massive pine trees is the monument.

Thirty seven stones form an incredibly graceful arc maybe 50 metres wide, which cannot be photographed adequately. The arc now embraces a nice middle class tennis court. Fortunately, the land immediately in front of the cromlech is clear of development, so you can stand well back and contemplate the whole thing. I loved this. I loved that there were so many stones still up and that this quiet part of town had grown up around it without encroaching on it.

“Where now, Spaceship Mark?” I asked. The last monument of the day was to be what I wrote down as Dolmen de Kermané (I wrote down ‘Kerangoff’ for some reason I now can’t remember?) At the end of a lane in a tiny little hamlet this is yet another of those corking local dolmens that is overlooked by visitors to the area in favour of the larger “Hollywood” monuments. If this was in the UK people would drive miles to see it. This one’s capstone had to be supported by an iron girder, but hey, at least it meant someone cared!

I loved it here and made a really quick sketch while Moth set up the tripod.