The standing stones at Carnac
I went to see the standing stones at Carnac recently. Full disclosure here — I didn’t set off to see the standing stones. I set off to get my teeth cleaned. I had an appointment with the dentist, so I had my day planned to leave in lots of time and get there early. It turned out I got there a half hour late. I parked in time to get a phone call that I was too late. I felt badly about standing them up, but I really had believed I would get there early. I drive very slowly in the van.
On the way there, I looked beside the road and said to myself, those are some really big rocks. Since I wasn’t getting my teeth cleaned, I might as well go look at them, so I retraced my steps and went to look at stones instead.
The stones don’t seem to be as big as the ones at Kerzerho, which are huge. There are a lot more of them though. It turns out that the sites are pretty close together, eleven minutes by car, two hours on foot.
The windmill
The sites haven’t been unoccupied in the last five thousand years. Among other things, there is the remains of a windmill. It was built in the 19th century, to grind grain. When I think of grain, I think of wheat, but it doesn’t grow well in Brittany, They would have been grinding buckwheat, rye and oats instead.
Now it makes a great observational platform. There is a metal staircase up to the top and just about enough room up there to walk around and see the stones spread out below.
In the realm of things you wouldn’t have expected, it turns out that the local farmers have been using seaweed as fertilizer since neolithic times. It worked well enough to spark turf wars between neighboring villages. The government stepped in to tell the locals when it was their turn to harvest. Then things changed again, then yet again. Now there is an effort to use seaweed in organic farming but in a much more high tech way. The products are more sophisticated, but the farming techniques are as well. Some of the companies have tours, maybe I’ll go on one someday.
0 Comments