Visiting France's Stonehenge at Carnac and Quiberon Bay Resort in Brittany with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
From Nantes,
we drove out to Carnac located in the Morbihan département. Three major Neolithic sites make up what are
called the Carnac Alignments in this département of Brittany.
“High
season” in the summer means that even though we arrived at 9 am, all the
tickets for a tour were sold out until the 11:30 am tour and those were going
fast. There would then be a lunch break
before the next tours.
We decided
to pass on a guided tour and drove along the road, which links all three
Neolithic sites, with our Celtic music playing.
The Bagad de Lann Bihouë music we listened to while driving made the ride cheerful.
According to
The Carnac Alignments: Neolithic Temples
by Jean-Pierre Mohen, the Carnac monoliths were erected 6,000 years ago by men
and women who used them between the fifth and third millennium BCE. The Neolithic period witnessed the dramatic
change from a hunting and gathering culture to one that relied on agriculture
according to H.W. Janson in his book History
of Art.
Mohen writes
that there are 3,000 monoliths at Carnac.
Most of these monoliths are menhirs that stand upright. The menhirs are not as tall as those at
Stonehenge, but their regularity of spacing illustrates how Neolithic man may
have sought to create order not only through a reliable food source, but also
through religion.
All three of
the Neolithic sites we drove by have fences around them now, but it is easy to
see the sites of Kerlescan, Kermario, and Le Ménec from the car. From Carnac we drove to the yachting town of
La Trinité-sur-Mer.
La Trinité
is a harbor with 1,200 docking slots for yachts. It has all the amenities to serve a yachting
population such as clothing boutiques, a weekly market, a merry-go-round for
children, and many restaurants along the harbor front. A catamaran that towered over the yachts was
in the harbor; it was made to ride ocean swells in the Atlantic and elsewhere.
We ate
steamed mussels and fries for lunch and enjoyed looking at yachts sailing in
the open sea. After lunch, we continued
along with the Bagad de Lann Bihouë
music playing to the Quiberon Isthmus.
The sun beat down on us, but the fresh ocean breeze cut down the heat. We could see the large island of
Belle-Ile-en-Mer in the near distance.
On the way
back to Nantes, I admired the Breton homes with granite inserts around the
windows, steep roofs to let the winter rains from the Atlantic roll off them,
lace curtains in the windows, and carefully pruned flowers everywhere.
Brittany
always charms me.
By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
