A Day with the Stones!

We've had the most glorious weather the last couple of days,sharp cold nights with starry skies, cold and frosty mornings and then enough sunshine & blue skies to bring a smile to everyone's face ! Saturday the temperature reached 15 C by 3 pm - what an end to February !!


As it was such a beautiful day we went off on our wanderings again to another new place and this time - no water!!


Brittany has a number of sites boasting multiple ' Menhirs' (Standing Stones or Monoliths) and you'll often come across the odd one or two out walking! Carnac on the south coast is probably the most well known and most visited, but Monteneuf is actually just 30 minutes down the road from us - and yes - this was our first visit!!



The Stones are dated back some 5000 years, but it is thought that many on them were destroyed about 1000 years ago. There are 400 plus scatttered over an area of 7 hectares' mainly woodland, and were only discovered just over 30 years ago after a series of fierce forest fires - the area is now a major archaeological site in Brittany. As they cover such a large area , we decided to aim for one of the main sites, Les Pierres Droites.

After following a well sign- posted road, and reading information provided in a number of languages

we found the Stones !

These details refer to the big guy just behind the bush on the left of the photo above

and just to give you another idea of their size, DH agreed to make his Blogger debut (after some 'gentle' persuassion from me!!) by standing alongside one - he is just under 6 ft so you can see how big they are !

These are just a few photos of one site , but I am trying not to get too carried away and keep the post reasonably short :-)

After taking in all the Stones, we set off on one of the official circuits

through a beautiful forest

Oh..ooh!! I said no water !!!!!

Managed to get ourselves lost ..again, well, perhaps 'lost' is the wrong word! We'd got almost around the circuit and could actually see the car park in the distance across a couple of fields , when we were stopped in our tracks!! This part of the walk went alongside some farm land where the local farmer had managed to tear up the lane with his tractor wheels and leave behind a HUGE deep puddle of rather unpleasant looking mud - I know it was unpleasant as I managed to step in it !! There was no way we were going to get across without waders so we had to turn back and do the whole circuit again!! Not really a major problem as it was such a lovely day but I can tell you we slept well Saturday night !!

Almost back at the car park we came across another of Brittany's claim to fame -hordes of cyclists!!

A big ' Bonjour' plus a wave (!) and lots of shouted comments about me taking their photo - what better end to another lovely afternoon !!!