This day was Sunday August 30, 2015
No alarm has been set and we actually don't get up until 8:30 which seems really late for us but that’s still about 7:30 UK time so about normal. Today is supposed to be hot and dry and the only one we might have so we are headed for the beach. Our friend has recommended Carnac as it has lots of standing stones and dolmens as well.
By the time we cook breakfast and head out to the car, it is almost 10:30 or so or even later but what the heck. Vacation. We now find out that the GPS will not allow us to go without entering something besides just a city. Wants street too. I finally figure out to put in the street of the tourist office. And we're’re away
.
Finally into Carnac and My hero has been studying some of the map around the area and sees that there are many stones and areas of interest. As we are driving through the city, we spot a market so we find a place to park, luckily, moving into the parking lot just as someone was leaving. Doesn’t seem to be anywhere to pay and as we are following people to the market, we pass a cop and hubby asks if there is a fee. He doesn’t understand but manages to tell us it is free but cannot park in the blue areas because those are handicapped. Good to know. We have also learned some of the road signs. Apparently, once upon a time, anyone coming from the right had the right of way even if you were on a more major street and speeding along. So now I am creeped out at all these little roads moving into mine but we do learn to watch the signs and see which ones have been moved to stopping and which ones we still have to watch out for.
The market was good, busy. Lots of shoes and purses and clothes. I find a new purse as the one I just bought at Tesco has already ripped on the pull. Luckily I find one I like for only 69 euros. Ha. Don’t really see anything else that is wonderful and not really any crafts at all besides some of the Africans coming up from Morocco to sell their jewellery and their backpacks
.
We move into the city and there is traffic and can’t quite tell where to go but still following the GPS and pull up, finally, to the tourist office and can actually find a place to park at the front door practically. The reason for this good luck is because it is closed on Sundays. Wow, not your most friendly of tourist offices. All signs on the door are in French too so not very helpful.
Across the street is a small pastry and coffee shop so we go over there to get a sandwich and pastry and then figure we’ll go to the beach for a picnic and then go find standing stones. Of course, the only sandwiches they have are ham and cheese or odd tuna or odd curry so it’s ham and cheese again. At least we have now seen that they have more than just ham and cheese sandwiches. Maybe it is just always the lesser or evils in the sandwich world which is why we end up with ham and cheese.
There’s a place to park at the beach as well so we’we're golden. Walk down to the beach which is not terribly crowded but does have plenty of people including a bunch who are swimming. Yikes. There are small open tents but they look to be private or rented or something as there are chairs in a few but they are locked up with bicycle chains
. A lady sits in one we pass and glares at us so it’s sitting in the sand time.
We find a place in the sun and sit and eat our sandwich and eat our pastries. Then it’s walk on the beach time and find some shells. We find some razor clam shells which I never have before and wouldn’t even know what they were except for one of the cooking shows. So television can be educational. HA. don’t gather too many because I am having to put them in our sandwich bag which is getting soggy and wet and in danger of tearing but we have some nice shells and different ones from England beaches.
Back to the car with a stop at a toilet. There is a large sand sculpture with an elephant and people and a seal but it seems to be rather old and parts of it have been wreaked already. Next to it are some smaller sculptures that are not near as detailed or good.
Trying to find some way on the GPS to tell us how to get to the standing stones. We try different ways to type in the requests and finally find Les Megalithes and hit it and away we go. We pass a small dolmen at the corner of a busy road and no way to stop so we just have to pass it
. We turn down a road and find that Las Megalithes is a camping site. But it stands to reason that there must be some close by so we try "attractions" under the GPS heading and find one less than a mile away. So close that the GPS invites us to walk. Nope. That’s not happening.
So a few hundreds of meters, we come upon the Alignements de Kerzerho. Parking is available and there are not many people there. An older man is sitting at a table just as you walk into the site. Wasn’t sure if he was a fee taker or not but he was selling books and all in French so we walked past him.
The Alignements are just that. Rows and rows of standing stones. Brilliantly flawless rows or probably were when they were first installed. Now many of the stones are leaning or fallen but it was still impressive. It is also surrounded by a cornfield. We walked all through the rows and into the cornfield to see if it led anywhere else but it was just a cornfield.
Back to the car and it is sprinkling on us! What happened to our good day of weather? We have the method now. Look up attractions and look for anything with alignements or dolmens or tumulus. There is another dolmen a little ways away so we pick it and away we go. As usual, I turn the wrong way but the GPS picks it up quickly and gives me a good direction to go.
The next dolmen was just dolmen. It was in somebody’s field just right off the road and a lot of parked cars around it but it was also at a junction of driveways and appeared to be a party at the house at the bottom of the hill also with a pool and all
. We had to 4wheel it up a small hill with stumps to park and then walked around the dolmen for photos and we are off to the next one. This poor dolmen was lovely but didn't even rate a name. Just "dolmen" on the GPS. No signs once there either.
Next ones are Dolmens de Mane Kerioned and they are nice. There are several there, One was a walk through. One was underground and that one was the best. We walked into the darkness and used our cell phones to light the way. There were several carvings on the stones under there. We weren’t sure if they were ancient or graffiti from more modern times. on another day, we see others and do some reading up on some of it, and we have decided they are ancient. So it was good to spend a bit of time there.
Now it is getting hard to tell where we have been. I am trying to find attractions on the GPS and Mitchell is looking at the book and map. He says pick this one and we drive to it and dang if it wasn’t the Alignements de Kerzerho again. There were a lot more people here now. We just pulled in to pick our next place. we are off to Locmariaquer which has three sites in it including a menhir (giant standing stone) and one of the best dolmens and a burial cairn that you cannot get into but is supposedly quite large. Wasn’t too terribly hard to find. This place was a pay place and also had a video to go with it but the wait for the video was 12 minutes. Thought we would do it on our way out.
Walked around to the large cairn first. Was interesting but just basically a large pile of rocks in some kind of formation. At one point in time there had been a row of menhirs along the burial sites but they have long since been taken and now just the cairn
.
As we are walking to the dolmen, we pass a man who has just grabbed a cat off the ground and says to us, in English surprisingly, that it was his cat that had been missing for three days. Such a naughty cat, and now he has to go home to |Paris but he had stayed looking for his cat. Cat did not want to get close to us at all.
When we got to the dolmen, there was a door in the structure and I thought it wasn’t open which would have been disappointing because it was supposed to be and also said it was one of the best which is why we came to this one. But the sign said a tour was in progress. It was a private tour which was obvious when the door opened because it was three people. A couple had come up while we were waiting as well and walked right in ahead of us when the door opened. We followed them into the chamber which has huge stone at the back wall with carvings on it. They have rather odd lighting inside so the stone always looked like it had almost a red glow in the right hand corner. There were also carvings in the ceiling which some were similar to the carvings at another dolmen.
Back to the house for dinner and watching another video. Bourne Identity. Always a good one. Not getting any stars yet. Still cloudy - hmm. hope it clears as when we were in the Isles of Scilly a couple of weeks ago, we never saw but one star the entire time we were there. And that was supposed to be a great place for stars. hope we are not starless again.
By now we have been driving a lot and still have probably couple of hours drive to get home so we head out and back to Our friend’s.
No comments:
Post a Comment