Home / France, May 2017 / Carnac, 21 mai 49
Although it wasn't an alpine start by any means, I made an effort to get out early. We didn't quite catch the golden hour (golden two hours?) but still managed to avoid noon light. After getting some croissants at the boulangerie, I realized that renting the bikes at the hotel was quite clever; no bike rental place was open as we passed by. We made it to the village part of Carnac by 8:45 (vs the beach part of Carnac, where the hotel was.)
I figured that before we went to see thousands of rocks in lines, it would be good to start with a single rock. Off we went to the menhir Kerderff. GPS is super useful. We left our bikes by the edge of a field and walked towards said rock. The French government lets you know that the rock is state property (using another rock). Our first menhir! Just sitting there by itself in the middle of the field. You can walk right up to the less popular rocks. (You cannot camp in the field, though.)Next up was the biggest rock alignment, Menec. We rolled up on our bicycles and dodged a tour group. Yep. Lots of rocks. No access to these rocks in May; you can look at them from behind a fence. In March you can open the gate and go right in.
It's not that unusual to see over a thousand rocks, but it is unusual to see over a thousand rocks sorted by height and placed in rows by people, thousands of years ago. Sometimes there's a house among the middle of the rocks. Or a restaurant.
Walking around the back side of the alignments, we came across a sign by the Free Menhir association. It looks like they successfully fought the construction of Menhirland a few years ago. Not so sure about their goal of removing all of the fences, though. Do they not know what people always do?
We also got an excellent view from the top of an old mill, now set up as a publicly-accessible lookout.
Bicycles are great. We could follow the alignments past the end of Menec and onto Kermaio (1029 rocks) and Kerlescan (555), where we could park our bikes, admire the lawnmowers/sheep, and walk among the stones (because no one goes there; they're busy taking the tourist "tram" aka bus.)
Our maps suggested that the Kercado tumulus might also be interesting. Back on the bikes, to visit some 6000 year old structures (somewhat rebuilt). Interesting to go inside. (Not objectively interesting; it's just a cave made of rocks; but interesting due to its history). The roof was known as the Tables des Marchand and allegedly had some inscriptions on it.
Next up was the Quadrilatère and the Geant de Manio. Not pictured: biking past the people riding horses at the horse farm and trying to pet the horses.
Continuing along the road, the next sensible target was the Kermaquer dolmen, which was right on the D186. The entrance is from behind, though, so even though Google told us where it was, we had a sketchy hill to climb and some bushes to walk through.
It was still quite early: all these rocks and not even noon yet. What to do? More rocks, of course. Back towards Menec and then up to Keriaval, which was 7500 years old. Google took us through some back roads and then off-road (again), but we eventually got there. The last 500m involved a giant puddle, too. The ride back was uneventful.
We still had 3 hours before the bus at 5:30PM which would eventually get us to Paris. I tried to rent a boat or windsurfer at the Yacht Club Carnac, which would provide this service if it hadn't been exceptionally closed that day. I should've read the sign the previous day. I also tried to find Saint-Co Windsurf, but I think it's three guys and a van. So if you call them ahead of time, they'll probably bring you a board. But you can't just find them at their nonexistant store. It was still a good opportunity to ride the bike around the beach.
The bus got us back to Auray, and then we took the low-cost idTGV back to Paris. (By the way, there are three Novotels near CDG. This is terrible for finding the one that you have a reservation at.)
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- 04834 propriete de l etat 2137 visits
- 04836 menhir kerderff 2049 visits
- 04838 same rock different perspective 2176 visits
- 04840 hanging out in a field 2348 visits
- 04841 mossy 2190 visits
- 04845 menhir texture 2151 visits
- 04848 more menhir texture 2009 visits
- 04858 mp and menhir 2003 visits
- 04859 plam and menhir 2010 visits
- 04861 field 2039 visits
- 04862 mp and menhir again 2128 visits
- 04872 menec alignements 2240 visits
- 04879 transport 2395 visits
- 04880 towards western end of alignments menec 2453 visits
- 04898 living among alignements 2682 visits
- 04902 golf st laurent 2038 visits
- 04912 dent 1936 visits
- 04928 dolmen 2078 visits
- 04945 mp in front of rocks 1923 visits
- 04954 alignements 1896 visits
- 04956 menhirs libres 2027 visits
- 04957 path 1818 visits
- 04965 yay rocks 1783 visits
- 04973 dents 1779 visits
- 04979 alignements from tower 1948 visits
- 04981 more views from above 1925 visits
- 04985 vieux moulin 1985 visits
- 04988 mp outside tumulus kercado 1927 visits
- 04993 table des marchand 1989 visits
- 04997 tumulus kercado 2629 visits
- 04998 kercado marker 1952 visits
- 05017 le quadrilatere 2104 visits
- 05020 le geant de manio 2010 visits
- 05022 no climbing 2014 visits
- 05025 lawnmower among the menhirs 1953 visits
- 05027 with wildflowers 2073 visits
- 05039 sheep 1865 visits
- 05042 one sheep 1943 visits
- 05045 dolmen kermaquer right on the beaten path but hidden 1863 visits
- 05048 towards dolmen keriaval 2008 visits
- 05052 mp exploring keriaval dolmen 1956 visits
- 05055 caressing rocks 2035 visits
- 05059 dolmen keriaval 2016 visits
- 05062 looking inside 1980 visits
- 05070 shelter 2839 visits
- 05075 decorations 2198 visits
- 20170521 154152306 day for beach 2176 visits
- 20170521 183018636 waiting for tgv 2606 visits