Iter Facere

Auray

Still a bit bleak, but today's plan is filled with Neolithic adventure. First we need to walk over to the tourism office to book our trip to Gavarnis, which is a dolmen on an island, which needs reservations. So after breakfast we hike, and I do mean hike, since the hill from the port to the town's main square is really steep, to the tourisme. France has the best tourism offices...efficient, good information, multi lingual. She booked our trip and armed with maps we went in search or our stone age friends. The hill has convinced us we're eating dinner in the port, though.

First stop Carnac, which has a nice little museum focusing on the neolithic stuff from the area. Although given that everything isn French, we miss some of it.

Carnac is famous(?) for it's alignments...giant fields of stones set in lines in parallel with the sun's rays.









What were they thinking? Did they wake up one morning and say let's line up a bunch of rocks parallel to the sun? It was an immense amount of work, the field goes on for hundreds of yards, and the smaller stones are four or five feet by two to three feet. Apparently, they were brought to the area from several miles away. They needed to organize hundreds of people, and feed them in order to build this. Hmm.

From stone age mystery to modern beach resort. We left Carnac to drive down Presque Isle, or almost island, down to Quiberon. We had lunch overlooking the beach, at the tip of the island. Beach towns everywhere are the same. Sand, water, beach rugby tournament. From there we headed back along the Cote Savauge, the western side of the island. Quite striking, it must be fabulous in a storm.





And back to our forebears at Locamariaquer, where there are 2 dolmens and a giant menhir. This after stopping for the dolmen at St. Michel, just outside of Carnac.





This menhir originally was standing upright, around 4000 BC. Later, after it fell, they built this burial chamber




And then later this low rise dolmen...





Odd enough, but what was particularly memorable was the music drifting over from the circus set up just outside. This was the third or fourth circus we've seen set up outside or town. Listening to the calliope and looking at the dolmens was a good way to wrap up the day.

Of course, we still have to eat, so back to town for dinner at L'Eglantine. Outside again, weather cooperated, more or less and another winner for dinner. I had (I think) guinea fowl, bit Kathy had a fish call bar, which was excellent. No idea what it is, but a nice subtle white fish with herbs. Nice bottle of Nantais rose, and more Calvados. Kids happy too.

Location:Auray

posted by Jim @ 7:29 AM