France
OK, there was a bit of a problem this morning. I'm sure you expected one. I got up at 8.20am, went to the toilet, came back to the van, couldn't get warm or get more than a grunt out of Claire, so I got back into bed and didn't get out again until 10am. So the early morning coffee and croissants went by the wayside, and we had to settle for some (even more inferior than yesterday's) backup long life pain au chocolate for breakfast.
We eventually made it into town at about 12 noon or so. I've been feeling a bit out of sorts all day, probably down to too much sleep (and possibly too much wine last night?). We started off with a walk round the market, which was just like any other market really although there were some stalls selling some very nice looking cheeses and baguettes and mussels. But Claire had strongly hinted earlier that she'd like to go straight from town to look at the standing stones so I didn't dare buy any, as there's nothing worse than a sweating Camembert or wriggling mussels in your rucksack all day. So we bought some filled baguettes and some things that looked like flat doughnuts which we hoped were filled with apple to have for a picnic.
Carnac is famous for its countless standing stones. There are three massive clusters of them, which are known as the "alignments" and then loads (allegedly) of other individual stones and "dolmens" which are the Stonehenge style stones made into archways. We went to the alignments first. They sounded like something out of the first Tomb Raider film, so it came as a slight, but not altogether unexpected, disappointment to me that there was no sign of Lara Croft leaping over the stones or lining them up with some secret landmark to reveal all sorts of previously hidden treasures.
There were an awful lot of stones there. From some angles they just looked like a random mess of stones, but then when you stood in the right place you could see they were all aligned in rows as far as the eye could see. Very pleasing to the eye, although not quite as much as the American War Cemetary at Omaha beach. I suppose I can't ask as much of Neolithic man in terms of stone masonry really. We had a walk round the edge, as we weren't allowed to walk amongst the stones because of erosion (not of the stones, but the surrounding plants). I tripped over and hurt my ankle which didn't improve my feeling out of sorts one bit. Then we got back on the bikes and cycled to see the other two massive clusters of stones, which were every bit as impressive as the first, but still no sign of Lara Croft.
After that we decided to go and find a nice spot for lunch near some of the single standing stones or dolmens. It all looked pretty straightforward. We'd got a map from the information centre showing all the roads and stones. We knew where we were on the map. But could we find any of the stones? No. Bearing in mind that these are pretty big stones - the size of cars - it really shouldn't have been that difficult. I eventually reached meltdown point through hunger at about 2pm and we had lunch at a little picnic table not overlooking anything in particular. Claire wouldn't let us eat the doughnut things until we'd found a dolmen so they went back in my rucksack to get a bit flatter.
Eventually, about half an hour after lunch, we came across a sign for some dolmens that we'd been looking for for a while. After following a track through a wood for 300m we found them - a group of 3! We ate our doughnuts sitting on the flat top of one of them. Claire had picked up a leaflet about the stones, and we discovered that we were actually scoffing doughnuts on a prehistoric grave as they are burial chambers. The doughnuts were nice, but not quite like doughnuts. They were no worse for being a bit flatter than they should have been, although in my opinion could have done with a bit of custard filling to go with the apple, although I suppose that might have got squished out into my rucksack.
Now that we'd finally found some dolmens we headed back to Carnac. Claire was desperate to go to the museum to find out more about the stones. I wasn't that keen really, but decided to go along with it all for a quiet life. As it happened, we weren't in there long because (predictably) all the writing was in French so we didn't really know what we were looking at, despite the English guide book that we borrowed from reception. The main thing that I did learn (from some pictures on the wall) was that the dolmens were made by standing the two upright stones up, then surrounding them with soil, dragging the top stone up the newly formed slope, and then digging all the soil back out again. I'm not quite sure how modern man knows that's how they were made, but it was in a museum so it must be true.
After that we went back to George, where we have remained ever since, having some nice refreshing cider followed by some beers and a BBQ.
Tomorrow we are under no illusion about getting up early, in fact after the chill of this morning I don't really want to. We are having another day at the beach, and as the tide won't be in until afternoon, a lazy morning is positively encouraged.
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