Do you know the way to Barnenez?
Do you know the way to Barnenez?
I've never been so
I may go wrong and lose my way
Do you know the way to Barnenez?
I'm going there to find a great big cairn in Barnenez
Allee couverts and some dolmens
See a whole bunch if you've got a car
In an hour, maybe two, you'll get quite far
Don't go too fast or they'll quickly pass
And all the stones are lying there amid the gorse for you to find
I've got lots of photos from Barnenez
Wo oh oh-oh, oh-oh oh-oh
Can't wait to get back to Barnenez
Wo oh oh-oh, oh-oh oh-oh
Do you know the way to Barnenez?
Côtes du Nord on a wild, wet Wednesday
Sane people do not go out in weather such as we experienced that day: grey skies and steady rain coming in at a slant with the occasional hailstorm. Sane people especially do not take cameras outside in these conditions. Welcome to the madhouse. There're lots to see on the north coast of Brittany. First stop Barnenez just 40 miles west from our cottage up on the north coast of Brittany.
It's so big and grand, this one has a visitor centre and mighty glad of it we were, too, as a shelter from the storm. 75metres long and with twelve burial chambers within its stony step-pyramid mound this is a beast and reminded me strongly of an out-size Camster grey cairn combined with Egypt's Saqqara pyramid.
During its excavation and reconstruction, a huge chunk was left missing deliberately to expose the manner of construction.
Four of the burial chambers are open to visitors the others are walled up. Each chamber has a different manner of construction – corbelled vaulting, dolmen-type chamber, side slabs only, etc. Inside the visitor centre are some of the carved, decorated stones found within the cairn which are very intriguing – one looks like a sheaf of corn. There are also some cracking photographs of the cairn before, during and after its excavation and examples of the finds – beads, pottery, axes – discovered there.
We drove back east from Barnenez towards Lannion - there are lots of sites to see round here including many alleé couverts and menhirs.
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.
Over on the touristy island of Ile Grande, which you can drive over a causeway to, is the Ile Grande allée couverte which is rather pleasant being neither small or big, long nor short. Just yer average local allée couverte for local people.
And just one kilometer away just before you get to the causeway 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 semihemispheres and a couple of long lines with dots running parallel. These 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…
En route to Kerguntuil we noticed this…
…at the roadside, Keryvon allée couverte. The end of it is practically falling away onto the beach. Only one capstone left up.
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. It's an average sized allée couverte and like so many round here has strange carved semihemispheres 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.
As few miles further east, you reach the very beautiful mediaeval town of Treguier. Just by where the bridge crosses the Jaudy river estuary you'll find, opposite a hotel, Tossen-Keler cromlech
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.
I noticed one last monument symbol on the map, not far from where we were at Treguier, but I had no instructions to get there. We took the chance and went anyway. Thankfully, we picked up a signpost. As we parked, the heavens opened, but by now this failed to move us, our shoes and trousers were already soaked to the thigh. Men ar Rompet allée couverte is a bit trashed but its location is simply lovely overlooking the wide expanse of the estuary.
It had bigger, thicker stones than all the other allée couvertes we'd seen today further to the west.
For the most part, the stuff up here in the north may not be as 'hollywood' as the sites around Carnac, but if you're in Brittany anyway, it's certainly worth investigating.
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'Where now, Spaceship Mark?'
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.
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.
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.
'Where now, Spaceship Mark?' I asked. 'Up there!' he replied, pointing at Kercado tumulus just a kilometer away.
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… Warning: this is a LONG weblog
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. 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.
We walked back through the woods to wander along the roadside by the nearby Kerlescan alignments. Astonishing stuff.
'Where now, Spaceship Mark?' I asked. 'You can't walk among these alignments' he said 'but we can walk among stones at the Petit Menec alignments.'
Again, just two minutes in the car and we're there. In thick woodland are some much lesser alignments at Petit Menec but I suspect these are not often visited and 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.
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. If you go visit him ask him for his shopping list.
There are two sites at Crucuny, but only one made it into TME. The wrong one in my opinion. 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 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 the lane. I liked this a lot and wondered if the house was for sale.
"Where now, Spaceship Mark?" I asked. "How about some dolmens?" he replied. A much longer five minute drive brought us to Dolmens de Mane Kerioned.
Sitting right by the main Roman road this complex of three dolmens has 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.
Just metres away 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.
Heading back down towards Locmariaquer, a long journey today of – oooh – at least 10 minutes, 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 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.
Back in the car again for two minutes and up to Mané Roularde allée couverte 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.
"Where now, Spaceship Mark?" I asked. "How about some more dolmens?" he replied. Another three minute trip in the car and we'd found this rather nice pair, the Kerrin dolmens, at the edge of the hamlet of Kerrin 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.
"Where now, Spaceship Mark?" I asked. "Some weird stuff" he said. Another two minute tootle in the car took us the by now familiar car park of Table des Marchants, Er Grah and Grand Menhir Brisé. We walked past them and 100 metres down the lane towards the Locmariaquer cemetery to see the gravestone shaped liked a menhir pictured on page 84 (bottom right) in TME.
I liked the way the Fleuriot family grave referred so directly to the megalithic landscape in which the people interred here lived. Clearly la famille Fleuriot were proud of their ancient heritage and had no problem with combining that with their following of Christ who, let's face it, was a revolutionary socialist and would fit in nicely within mainstream French cultural thinking.
Anyway, round the corner from the cemetery into the village, en route towards the Mané Ruthiel we past this great broken menhir thingy. Unnamed, unmarked on maps, age unknown. 'WTF?' we wondered!
And 150 metres further on, 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!) This was undoubtedly Moth's favourite.
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.
Our next stop was Luffang allée couverte which although it didn't have any capstones was quite intriguing as now it was just a banana-shaped stone-lined trench, about 15 metres along. That banana-shape again. Just like Pierre Plates and Kernours tumulus. Weird.
Very nearby in some woodland are the dolmens. These are not really public access, but we proceeded anyway. The first one Parc Guren I is up an a rise to the left to the track it's 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 Guren 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.
"Where now, Spaceship Mark?" I asked. The last monument of the day was to be Dolmen de Kerangoff just a few minutes drive away. At the end of a lane in a little hamlet this is yet another of those corking local dolmens that is overlooked by visitors to the area in favour of the larger monuments. This one's capstone had to be supported by an iron girder, but hey, at least it meant someone cared!
Both Moth and Mark had been trapsing around with their tripods all day, so far unused, so this seemed like a great opportunity to take a self-timer group shot of the three of us in front of the dolmen.
(I love cheesy group photos – they seem so awkward and staged at the time, but when you look back on them they're fab!) Of course, I then wanted more. I wanted one of us in front of the Kermario alignments, too. It wasn't far away after all. Nothing is very far away here. In Carnac you're never more than a few hundred metres from the next monument.
The next day was my birthday and we all needed to eat by now so we bowled up at a restaurant in Carnac Plage to dine together and celebrate. After dropping Mark back at his campsite we retired to the Hotel du Tumulus for the night we reflected that Spaceship Mark's extraordinary local knowledge had saved us so much time and enabled us to see more than we could have ever found on our own.
Thank you, Spaceship Mark. It was a great pleasure and a privilege to spend the day with you.
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Carnac virgin loses her cherry
We were staying up on the north coast of Brittany due to free accommodation but this - coupled with determination and nose-thumbing to the horrible two hour drive to get there - was not going to stop me from getting to Carnac. Moth had been before. In fact, everyone seems to have been before. At last, this was about to change. My first day in Carnac.
Having already established we couldn't get the ferry over to Gavrinis until later in the afternoon, we drove straight down to the Locmariaquer peninsula, just east of Carnac.
Grand Menhir Brisé, Er Grah, and Table des Marchants are all on one managed site with a car park, visitor centre and shop for which you pay a small fee of €4.60.
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. (pictured below)
Turns out that compared to GMB, it's a tiddler. The difference is that 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 I wonder if it was ever vertical?
Pictured below, Moth enters the Table des Marchants with GMB in the background
Within 15metres of GMB 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. Pictured below, the lofty passageway at Table des Marchants
And 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.
With the sun out and dozens of 'Hollywood' sites to see we had to crack on. Moth insisted I see one in particular, knowing my mind would be blown by it. Les Pierres Plates 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 kilometer or so away, hidden 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.
Leaving Locmariaquer to drive round the bay towards Gavrinis, we stopped to take in 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 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 Pierre Plates 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…
And then it was time to head down to Larmor Baden village to catch the 3.30 ferry to see Gavrinis. (Cost: 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.
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?
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.
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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.
Back on shore again we whizzed back round to Locmariaquer to find Kercadoret dolmen. This one 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.
Not far from Kercadoret is tumulus Mane Lud which is well worth stopping by. 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.
It was about 6 o'clock. And I really, really, REALLY wanted to see the alignments. We drove the short way back towards Carnac passing the MONSTER 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 rightly so. It also has a hotel, Hotel Tumulus, built right next to it in which we would stay over a few days later.
We were approaching the alignments from the middle and Moth wanted to give me a real 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. Menhirs galore snaked gracefully across the undulations of the land. We drove along slowly – 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. 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. I stared and stared, leaning on the fence barring my way into the alignments and watched as a stonechat landed on top of the nearest tallest menhir and sang his little heart out.
What a day.
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This weblog contains human remains which some readers may find disturbing
We visited 'The Mysterious Bog People' exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester (http://www.msim.org.uk) the day after we had visited a number of prehistoric sites in North Wales. The fact that we had just seen some of the great monuments built by people contemporary with those human beings exhibited in the show gave it more weight, more meaning and somehow more reverence.
The exhibition was lit very low due to the fragile, light-sensitivity of many of the exhibits, including the bodies. But this also had the effect of adding to the 'gravitas' and sense of something very, very special. No-one spoke loudly and the children looked at the displays with quiet, quizzical awe. Visitors were taken through stunning displays from the Neolithic through time right up to the medieval, charting the objects which were found in, or near to bogs, and the described the context of the finds.
It was a long way into the exhibition, once the context had been fully understood, until one reached the first body. But before we even reached it, we already been treated to some of the astonishing and precious finds which had been ritually placed into the bog:
- a reconstruction of a wooden trackway showing how people travelled across the boggy margins
- a mind-blowing collection of beautiful polished axes of various stone types
- two bronze age wooden wheels from Midlaren in the Netherlands, where Moth, Cleo and I visited just three months ago to see the pair of hunebedden there
- polished flint axes, also from Midlaren, NL
- fabulous beakers and other pottery with delicate zigzag decoration, also from Dutch bogs, and
- in addition to the many bronze axe heads, even a mould for casting a socked axe.
So by the time you reach the first 'ultimate sacrifice', as the display put it, you are ready to see it. In truth, he looked like a leathery doggy chew, but the fact that he still existed - right here - along with all these objects, along with all the burial chambers his contemporaries had built and we had seen the day before was jaw-dropping. You could imagine this remnant of humanity living again, wearing the amber beads in the next display case, playing his lur, putting on his delicately crafted leather shoes and stepping out of his house to play with his children.
A reconstrution of what was interpreted to be a temple from Barger-Oosterveld was also on prominent display. Dated 1470BC, the original wooden eaves and posts were displayed alongside photographs of the 'ground plan' archaeology discovered at the edge of a bog in the Netherlands. It reminded me of a Menorcan Taula monument.
One of the most powerful exhibits to me were a pair of plaits of hair which had been put on a piece of wood and deposited into the bog at Odoorn, NL. In December, we visited Odoorn to see the hunebed there:
Just like the precious locks of hair I have of my children cut when they were tiny. Next to it in the display case was a bronze age ball of wool. Exactly like the balls of wool my grandmother had. Exactly the same.
So connected do you feel to these ordinary people, who we know were just like you and I are now, that when you come face-to-face with the Weerdinge couple you feel as if you somehow knew these guys.
It didn't feel ghoulish, disrespectful or freaky at all. Quite the reverse, in fact. You wonder, instead, what these men felt when they were dispatched. Did they know they would be sacrificed and placed in the bog? If they did, how did they feel about that? Special? Scared? Both? And what about their families?
Did Yde girl know what was coming? The mortal remains of this 16-year-old lie on a hospital bed, as if waiting to be put into a MRI scanner. I looked closely at her shrunken, deformed leathery head, her little mummified toes peeping out from beneath a blanket and thought - this was once someone's beautiful daughter, perhaps someone's beautiful mother. I saw her life, not her death.
I must also mention the oldest wooden logboat ever discovered on display there. Ten thousand years old! Amazing. Carved out of a log with flint. Reconstructions of it have revealed it to be perfectly useable and manoeuvrable. How cool is THAT!
There are also Iron Age bodies and artifacts, Roman coins and jewellery, and early modern pottery to enjoy. Finally, the exhibition concludes with a wishing well and asks visitors to consider exactly what they are doing and thinking when they throw objects of value into a pool. How different is it to what went on in the past?
Many of the exhibits were on loan from the Drents Museum at Assen in the Netherlands. Check out http://www.drentsmuseum.nl it's a great website. Better still, better go there.
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Conwy crusade: Tal-Y-Fantastic
It was when treaclechops received a text message querying if the air ambulance had been dispatched yet to rescue me from a mountaintop that I realised there might be 'a bit of a walk' involved.
We drove as far as we could up the track out of Penmaenmawr climbing higher and higher up the mountainside and parked.
Treaclechops pointed up, beyond two mountains. "See those stones, right up there...?" Oh shit. There was nothing for it but to get my head down and start walking. God, I hate walking. What a boring waste of time. I hardly noticed the stunning mountain views, the stunning sea views, the stunning pastoral scenery. I was too busy looking at my feet on the path to avoid falling over. I hardly noticed the Red farm stones and the tiny circle 275 in my quest to finally f**king well get there. Collapsing down out of the cold breeze I finally had the chance to admire this magnificent monument and its beautiful
setting.The Druid's circle is gorgeous and perfectly proportioned - not too big to overwhelm, not to small to underwhelm - and the stones are the 'right' height for its diameter. Many big tall ones still stand, including an anthropomorph of a be-robed monk. Nearby are a stone 'something' (perhaps a trashed stone circle, who can tell?) and a collapsed cairn ring of tiny stones. This is the remaining 'A-list' monument forming part of a vast sacred landscape behind Penmanmawr of which there is much to see round the back of the mountains at Tal-Y-Fan.
The ghastly hike would have been worthwhile if we'd had more time to spend up there. I didn't even a chance to paint. If you can walk and look at the same time I'm sure the hike might be quiet enjoyable. Maen-y-Bardd is also known as the Poet's stone but should be called The Dinkiest Dolmen in the World Ever. I have not superlatives enough for this place.
Like a rat up a drainpipe, I crawled in and sat down, lit a Camel and grinned like a mad woman for 20 minutes as Moth and treaclechops tore round and photographed it from every angle.
Trust me, if this doesn't make you smile, nothing will. It is perfection! Then, treaclechops told us that there was another burial chamber just 100 ms away! But we had to find it first amongst all the erratics on the hillside. Ironman's useful and very accurate directions had been left in the car. Megalithic noses and shoe-leather was required instead.Not as picturesque as it's neighbour Maen-y-Bardd Rhiw Burial Chamber, also known as the Greyhounds' Kennel, is dug into the hillside rather than standing above it. With big flat capstone and large flanking uprights lining the chamber, this has plenty of remnants of its larger shape lying about the place, some kerbstones and a distinct mound of barrow. Lots to unravel and think about. I loved it! Under the crackle of a very nearby pylon, this tiny, fragile circle has somehow survived in this sacred Tal-Y-Fantastic landscape. The fourteen small stones are all very loose and wobbly, and close investigation revealed that many of them were not set into the earth at all, but placed into rubble sockets. One of the taller stones had fallen over. So treaclechops and I carefully stood it upright again into its rubble socket. No doubt the next time a sheep farts within five metres of it, it'll be over again. And what of the people who built these monuments? We'd meet some of their contemporaries the following day in 'The Mysterious Bog People' exhibition in Manchester the next day...
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Habitat: Commonly sighted in fields round Oxfordshire and Wiltshire.
Distribution: Widespread; occasional migrations to overwinter in Africa or other hot climes.
Characteristics: A tall, blonde, opinionated bird with feisty temper when provoked. Prone to spells of gloom during winter months. Usually sporting dark plumage, except for golden head, can often spotted with sketchbook and brushes near megalithic sites.
Feeding habits: Easily tempted with cheese (any variety) or a nice cup of tea. Unfeasibly fond of curry.
Behaviour: Unpredictable, approach cautiously. Responds very favourably to flattery.
Abhors: slugs, invisible sky gods, Tories, the Daily Mail, bigots, eggs, the cold, walking and timewasting.
Adores: a man called Moth, painting, live music, furry creatures, tea administered frequently, hot places, cheese, writing crap poetry, David Attenborough, Ernest Shackleton, Vincent van Gogh and the English language.
Want more?: see her website.
Big old rocks I find appealling
Their secrets they are not revealing
Some are chambers, some are tombs
Hidden in valleys and in combes
Some are said to act like clocks
With shadows cast out from their rocks
I like the way they just survive
When I visit, I feel alive
So I chase my rocks around the maps
Round England, Ireland and France, perhaps
But there ain't nothin' that I liked so much
As to see the Hunebedden, dem is Dutch.
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