En Bretagne (II) et deux beaux chateaux ...

In the calming light of day, we set off for an hour's drive on Friday to visit the prehistoric Cairn de Gavrinis on an island in the Gulf of Morbihan.  On arrival, we discovered that the only boat was en panne (out of order).  We obtained a phone number and instructions to call back later that afternoon, quickly revised our day's plans, and set off for nearby Locmariaquer and Le Site de la Table des Marchand, another eerie set of 6,500-year-old stone monuments.  

The most impressive was Le Grand Menhir (above), the largest known single block of stone to have been transported and erected by Neolithic man.  Broken into four sections now, it once stood over 60 ft. tall.  The 280-ton megalith was quarried from a region several kilometres distant, and experts still argue about how it must have been transported.  But no one disputes that for its time, it was an incredible achievement.

And it wasn't alone.  Eighteen stone circles mark the places here where other menhirs once stood.  They may have been used for human sacrifice, as territorial markers, religious icons, or perhaps they had an astronomical function (primitive calendars?).  Then, around 4200 BC, they were abruptly dismantled and reused in the construction of later monuments.  Could it have been by a conquering army imposing a new religion?  But then why was Le Grand Menhir alone preserved?

Standing nearby is the cairn of le dolmen de la Table des Marchand.  To help you get this straight (it took me a while): a dolmen is a small room constructed of huge stone slabs standing in the form of a table and probably used as a tomb.  A cairn is its unmortared stone covering.  The interior of the dolmens were covered in engravings, many of which remain but whose meaning is lost to us...

Cairn and entrance to dolmen:

Below is the furthest interior wall, fully engraved though you can't see it in the picture.  The ceiling slab here has a partial design that matches up with another piece in the Cairn de Gavrinis (4 km away on an island in the Gulf).  Archaeologists have determined that these are two fragments of the same menhir, one of the 18 that have disappeared from this site:

A side wall and entry corridor (the height of the ceiling gradually rises the deeper inside you go):


These are the earliest forms of stone architecture in Western Europe.  There is only one entrance and exit, and most were completely covered not only by their cairns, but also by sand, soil, and eventually vegetation.  Most historians believe they were tombs of important Neolithic people, but on excavation, no one has ever found any bones or other fossils.  Were the tombs plundered early on, even for their bones?  Or were they in fact not funerary at all, but perhaps some kind of temple?  Again, opinions vary, and you can take your pick.

We left prehistory behind and drove northwest (back to the region of our haunted cottage) to visit the town of Port-Aven, famous because of Paul Gauguin and his followers.  Oddly enough, as an artistic mecca it had been first discovered not by the French but by a group of 19th century American painters attracted by the light, colors, traditional costumes and headdresses, and the remoteness of the locale.  Brittany was still considered exotic then, something of a secret, but all that changed with the advent of the railroad and, for artists, the invention of paint in tubes which liberated them from their studios.  The Parisians were not far behind the Americans.  In a letter to Gauguin, the painter Jobbe Duval described Pont-Aven as "a little inexpensive hole of a place."  That was all it took to launch an entire artistic movement known as The Pont-Aven School.

Now, of course, it's something of a tourist trap, with art galleries, studios, and cafés lining the narrow streets.  But once you discover the river and follow it a ways, you can begin to sense what originally lured those artists here.

We meandered around Pont-Aven and visited its art museum (where the few Gauguins stood out as markedly superior to the other paintings), then headed out of town for a beer and an excellent seafood dinner on the beach at Guidel-Plages.  We spent one more night at Ty Horses (leaving all food in the car), and whatever had visited us the night before decided, blessedly, to try its luck elsewhere.   

Next morning, we drove back to the Gulf to catch the 10:30 am boat (now in working order) for a guided tour of the magnificent Cairn of Gavrinis, a much larger and more ornate structure, remarkable both for its construction and preservation.  In this one, the corridor leading to the inner chamber is more than 45 ft. long, with 23 extravagantly engraved pillars and a ceiling stone matching up with the one in Locmariaquer.  

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but you can see some at this Gavrinis site.  The first known excavation of the dolmen was carried out in 1835 by a landowner who must have been simply curious as to what, exactly, this enormous grassy hillock (20 ft. high and 160 ft. in diameter) was doing in the middle of his island (click here).  At the time, there was no visible entrance -- just a huge mound of dirt and grass.

Our tour group entering the front of the cairn:

Funny how interesting things get after you look into them for a while.   Before we went, I politely suppressed a yawn at the prospect of visiting megaliths.  Now, I have to restrain myself from trolling the internet for interesting new tidbits about them to add to the blog.  Assuming you don't yet share my newfound enthusiasm, let us move on ...

It was time for us to leave Brittany and return to Paris, but we delayed the inevitable by exploring one more island in the Gulf (Ile de Berder) which, at low tide, we could simply walk to.  Big signs everywhere warned that if we lingered too long and let ourselves get stranded by the tide, les pompiers (firemen) would charge 50 euros per person for a rescue.  (Me, I would simply stretch out under a pine tree and delay the inevitable for another six hours ...)  

We came across a mysterious abandoned chapel at the tip of the island.  I'm sure there's a story in it somewhere.

But before we said our goodbyes I managed to catch this night shot of Pouldu (another of Gauguin's haunts) where we ate wonderful moules frites ...

I know this blog has really overstayed its welcome, but let me just tell you that before we returned the rental car on Monday, we managed to visit two wonderful chateaux on the outskirts of Paris, Vaux le Vicomte and Chateau de Dampierre.  Both have interesting stories, but I will save them for another blog.  In the meantime, you can see their pictures (as well as more of the above activities) at this website.