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As anyone in the tourism industry knows, planning is essential.  Perhaps no entrepreneurs were so aware of this as the early Neolithic people who once inhabited the far northwest corner of France known as Brittany.  Their capitalist skills were so finely honed that they erected a host of mysterious stones and tombs in anticipation of the next 5,000 years of curious travelers.  Brilliant. So it was that I found myself beside just such a wonder gazing up at its lichen peppered sides.  It looked like some massive figure, completely enrobed, solemnly keeping vigil over the unknown for some cryptic master.  I couldn’t help but wonder about the people that placed it here and the subsequent travelers, who like myself, found themselves drawn to it. I had tirelessly scoured the pamphlets of a visitor center in Rennes till I happened upon a promising base camp for whatever it was that I was doing there – the town of Huelgoat (pronounced Hewl-got, no goat).  It’s a small town in the center of Brittany surrounded by mythical forests, forgotten cottages and pleasantly unknown.  I set camp along the creek that runs through the town center and though looking a bit wild, wooly and weary, took my mission out into the woods.

Map of French Provinces

Early Celtic tourists settled the area in the 6th century B.C.E., no doubt entranced by its ambiguous rocks and charm.  Even Julius Caesar, one of Gaul’s most famous travelers, was puzzled by the peninsula when he conquered it in 56 B.C.E.  It’s so fascinating in fact, that after the Romans kicked them out, the Celts returned from their life in Britain to settle the area once.

Even today the land is an anomalous pocket of Celtic tradition in France. The Gaelic language is still spoken in some parts and they fiercely display their culture on or in any flag, window or menu that will bear it.   It was annexed by France in 1532, but 400 years later they’re still not keen on the French and a strong separatist movement is still alive and well.  This is France’s Quebec.
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Moss covered boulders Sunset over lake and town

The trails swung up and down the rolling terrain, the weather was marvelous and the locals seemed shy, but not withdrawn.  It was a wholly agreeable day for a holy pilgrimage to anywhere.  I scuttled over huge boulders shagged with blankets of moss, through surprisingly young forests, and even wandered into an apiary by mistake.  Massive slabs of rock were piled around every trail corner, looking as though they’d been tossed there by some giant farmer eons ago.  Occasionally I’d spot some rather recent stone engravings of a chalice or mysterious symbols as if to suggest I was on ‘the right track’. 

As the trail plateaued  along a hilltop, I came across a large lump in the ground.  A small sign to the side explained that my lump was in fact a medieval fort.  Europe has no shortages of imposing castles and forts, but medieval lumps in the ground are getting harder and harder to find.  Despite their construction, there is something more concrete and personal about them than their towering cousins.  I stood on top of the fort and imagined myself up there, guarding…something, let’s say a grail…with a only a few friends, a thin starving fire and an arrow or two.  I imagined peering off into the mysterious murk of the night and nervously squeaking out, “Who goes there?” at a noisy squirrel, hoping none of those menhirs had magically come to life. 
 
My feet took me outside the forest, across the fields to a small handful of homes.  They were old houses with stone masonry foundations, vintage doors that were probably more paint than wood and thick glass windows distorted through the years.  I heard children giggling somewhere.  The front doors were wide open, letting the breeze roll through every room.  And when I glanced in –  blue print tiles covered the kitchen walls, worn, chocolate brown wooden countertops held loaves of bread, and thick maroon sausages dangled from the ceiling.  It had all the makings of a place well loved and well lived.  I’d gone back a few centuries in only a few miles.  I imagined a copper can of fresh flowers in water on the kitchen table and a small old clock chiming on the wall, but realized the owners probably wouldn’t appreciate a stranger, especially one with a striking resemblance to the land’s previous neolithic owners, wandering through their house and so I ambled on.

The trail picked up on the other side of the village, but before I was even on it, I noticed, in someone’s backyard, behind their vegetable garden, an unmistakable stone slab protruding from the earth.  It must have towered at near twenty feet.  It’s ancient gray sides smoothed by time, the grass at its feet nicely trimmed as it loomed in a vine strewn glen.  I pressed my palm to its cold surface and looked up.
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My menhir

What the Knights of the Roundtable would have made of these stones I don’t know.  Perhaps the menhirs were parts of an intricate calendar or guidance system.  But people don’t search them out to learn when to plant their crops or sacrifice their local virgins anymore.   Today, they’re a link to something beyond ourselves, an ancient but welcomed ‘hello’ from where we came.  Under the faded orange of the early night, I made my way back to the town center, a small cobbled square surrounded by tightly packed buildings and dined on crepes alone in the back one of the few restaurants open in the shadow of a dark, worn grandfather clock that seemed to enjoy the game of keeping time, even if it never came close, as if it had rung enough throughout its life to know better than to take time seriously and tolled out its chimes whenever it thought I could use a good jolt.

The following is Andrew's first article for the magazine:

Foaming In The Fjords - In Norway

To contact Andrew Click Here
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