We drove to Carnac today, which was a pretty mundane drive really. We left in mist, which once lifted, revealed the real root of the problem. The valley is filled with rubbish fires. It still astounds us that you can drive 300, 400, 500 kms on consecutive days and really still make little headway in this large country.
We arrived in Carnac early in the afternoon and immediately headed to what we came here to see, the standing stones, menhirs and dolmens. This is Asterix and Obelix country, and if you have souvenir dollars (euro) to spare, you can buy yourself a helmet like Obelix wears, plus a full set of their books (in French of course).
We headed for the ‘Alignments de Carnac’ which is a series of fields over four kms long containing 4000 menhirs all arranged in long rows. Some of them are little more than stones of less than a metre high, others are over 3.5 metres high. The biggest menhir around these parts is a granite rock (now broken) that would have stood at 20.6 metres and weighed in at 280 tonnes. The big question on everyones lips (as they are with all of these types of sites) is, why are they here, why are they arranged the way that they are, how did they get here, and what was the meaning of it all? These stones were placed here between 5000 and 2000 BC.
According to legend, the megaliths were Roman legionaries turned to stone (perhaps Getafix really was responsible), while local belief held them to be magical stones. To say that these fields are awe inspiring is not quite accurate, to say that it is an amazing site to see is also a slight exaggeration, they are extremely interesting and they raise more questions than answers, but they are still just fields of stones to look at. But I guess it is the questions and wonderings that draws the people, like ourselves, to this place. It is an interesting experience in an interesting part of the world.
We had to make some cold calls regarding accommodation tonight. It’s been a while since we have had WiFi access and so we don’t have anything arranged for the next few days. We were told that it would be no problem around here as there are plenty of camping grounds with cabins. This may be so, but they were all closed for summer. So after a quick drive around we came across a wonderful little B&B. The hostess couldn’t stop talking and her husband, well he just couldn’t compete with her. When she heard we were from NZ she said, “Oh we had an All Black say here recently, he was big and loud … and he was also large.” Hmmm … lasting impressions.
We arrived in Carnac early in the afternoon and immediately headed to what we came here to see, the standing stones, menhirs and dolmens. This is Asterix and Obelix country, and if you have souvenir dollars (euro) to spare, you can buy yourself a helmet like Obelix wears, plus a full set of their books (in French of course).
We headed for the ‘Alignments de Carnac’ which is a series of fields over four kms long containing 4000 menhirs all arranged in long rows. Some of them are little more than stones of less than a metre high, others are over 3.5 metres high. The biggest menhir around these parts is a granite rock (now broken) that would have stood at 20.6 metres and weighed in at 280 tonnes. The big question on everyones lips (as they are with all of these types of sites) is, why are they here, why are they arranged the way that they are, how did they get here, and what was the meaning of it all? These stones were placed here between 5000 and 2000 BC.
According to legend, the megaliths were Roman legionaries turned to stone (perhaps Getafix really was responsible), while local belief held them to be magical stones. To say that these fields are awe inspiring is not quite accurate, to say that it is an amazing site to see is also a slight exaggeration, they are extremely interesting and they raise more questions than answers, but they are still just fields of stones to look at. But I guess it is the questions and wonderings that draws the people, like ourselves, to this place. It is an interesting experience in an interesting part of the world.
We had to make some cold calls regarding accommodation tonight. It’s been a while since we have had WiFi access and so we don’t have anything arranged for the next few days. We were told that it would be no problem around here as there are plenty of camping grounds with cabins. This may be so, but they were all closed for summer. So after a quick drive around we came across a wonderful little B&B. The hostess couldn’t stop talking and her husband, well he just couldn’t compete with her. When she heard we were from NZ she said, “Oh we had an All Black say here recently, he was big and loud … and he was also large.” Hmmm … lasting impressions.
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