Day 4 - Brittany, standing stones, dolmens, and McBaguettes

Day 4 France 2012

Sunny and warmer today!  Another great breakfast at Le Manoir de Rigourdaine! Here's the beautiful dining room and reception area.

 As we got deeper into Brittany, we noticed that highway signs were written both in French and Breton (Celtic). 

We drove southwest through lots of rural countryside to Carnac, home of miles of standing stones.  We programmed Helen and made it to the town center at 12:00 and went straight to the tourist center.  The first set of doors was locked, but we could see people inside, so we went around to the other set of doors, and Leon opened the door to go in.  The young man behind the counter said that they were closed.  We asked when they would open again…2:00.  The sign outside said that they were open 24 hours.  The young man was kind enough to give us a map anyway.  We walked back outside in time to see all the shopkeepers moving their wares inside and pulling the gates across the shop doors.  We had forgotten that French small towns close up shop from 12:00 – 2:00 every day.  We decided to have lunch in what looked like a popular restaurant.  I ordered a Coke (no Pepsi to be found) and asked if it would be served with ice (also hard to find in France).  The waiter said that it would be served with ice, and indeed, it did have two ice cubes in it.  I figured that since we were American, they fixed it special for me – ice and no lemon slice floating on the top!

There is a beautiful church right in the middle of Carnac.  Although we had driven around several churches, we had not been inside one yet, so took the opportunity to go in this one.  They were getting ready for a funeral (we assume) since there were lots of mostly white floral arrangements being brought in.  We did not stay long, but did enjoy the beautiful stained glass windows.  The ceiling was painted wood and just gorgeous.

We drove just a little distance outside town and parked the car across from a field that was full of the stones.  Around here, they are called menhirs, megaliths, or “The Alignment.”  Since this is tourist season, we were not allowed into the field to get up close, but could walk completely around one of the fields on a little path.  The stones are in somewhat straight lines.  Some of the stones are only 3 feet tall, but others go up to 13 feet.  There are only about 3,000 of them left, but scientists estimate that there were originally about 10,000.  We saw some that had been moved to make a fence around somebody’s back yard, and some had been used to mark off a parking lot.  Apparently it has only been in the last 100+ years that the stones have been protected.  Before that, if you could haul them away, you could use them however you wanted.  Some of the stones weigh several tons.  The bottoms were only buried about 2 feet deep, so through the centuries, some of them have fallen over.

We looked on the map from the tourist office, and saw a photo of what looked like brown stones piled on each other and thought we would drive down toward the coast to see what they were.  There were no words by the photo, just these roundish brown “stones” that looked interesting.  We drove down the road and found out that there were no stones down there…it was a place where you could dig your own oysters!  Duh…we can’t tell the difference in rocks and oysters!

Back on the road again,  Leon decided to drive down by the Atlantic beach area.  There are tons of condos and hotels and apartments, none of them look very new and mostly older people were walking around.  We heard only French spoken there, so decided that it was a vacation spot for the older set.  We even saw a dirt lot where 3 different games of boule were being played…all older men having a great time.

 This hotel is for Diana! This beach is directly across the street...nice Atlantic beach!

We knew that there were some dolmen in that area, too, so drove around until we found some.  These are the upright stones covered with horizontal slabs that weigh several tons.  They were probably funerary rooms where the dead were buried.  We found 3 in one spot.  One was completely buried in the ground with steps down to it, and the other two were only half buried.  

We noticed that in most of Brittany the houses have black slate roofs, even the new houses.  We saw lots of new subdivisions as we drove down to Carnac (a little over 2 hours from our hotel).  We were wondering if France’s entry in the EU and change to the Euro had made more money available for housing loans.  There are new houses all over the place, and we think that the ones in the center of Brittany and farther south are not vacation homes like they are on the English Channel beach areas.  

As we drove back to our hotel, we decided to just stop at a McDonald’s for supper since we were tired and did not want to have to go to a restaurant for dinner.  We always like to go to a McDonald’s just to see what they have.  When I was teaching, I always got a Happy Meal to bring back so the school kids could see what was available in other countries, but now we can just eat anything.  They offer a McBaguette that is two burger patties laid side by side with cheese, lettuce, and spicy mustard on a baguette.  Leon ordered fries with his…McD’s fries taste the same all over the world.  We are always tickled that the drive-in is called McDrive.

There is a lot of agriculture in the middle of Brittany.  We saw dairy cows, both Holstein and Ayrshire.  The white cows we saw earlier in Normandy were Charolais and are mostly beef cattle, I think.  There were acres and acres of wheat, and some other fields had strips of plastic laid down with crops planted through the plastic.  I assume that keeps down the weeds.  The plants looked like corn.  We saw a few wind turbines, but not the hundreds that line every hilltop in Spain.

 Tomorrow we leave this wonderful manor house and start on our journey south.