10 Mar 2012

Carnac


Salty yes. But very nice. "Merci madame, est tres bon." This was me at the limit of my French communication which I was quite pleased with as my mixture of a smiling face, the word 'Anglaise' (if I add 'Ecosse' I invariably get a more engaging response) plus the word 'ignorant' had got me a tasting plus a full explanation as to the bucket of shellfish she was carrying.
Oh! And the interesting fact of "Moi amis est Anglaise, ooh la la!"

We had travelled round from Arradon yesterday to a very pleasant and out of the way spot on 'Pointe du Po' near Carnac. On the way we called into visitor centre at the 'Menec' standing stones and walked around them. Impressive; more so for the quantity and large area covered by the many parallel lines of standing stones.

I was not in the best of moods yesterday. Had one of my slow and sluggish brain days. I got angry at myself over my continuing incapability to leave a site without shutting cupboards or closing drawers. This happened twice. Once as I left Arradon with a crashing of various foodstuffs from the locker above the sink. Unbelievably I left the same locker open, which obediently repeated it's disgorging routine, as I left the supermarket where I had replenished stocks. Consequently I was not in a 'correct' frame of mind to appreciate fully the impact of these significant and numerous megalithic sites in this area.

Today is a different story. The stones at Carnac and all around this area now make sense.

I had a good nights sleep after a good dinner of home cooked fresh fish. This morning, Saturday by the way, Tanya and I set out on a long dogbikewalk. The tide was right out and what a bonus, we were able to cycle along miles of beach. The vast expanse of beach was breathtaking and populated not only by the commercial shellfish operators with their tractors and forklift trucks way out in the distance at the 'Moule/Oyster' farms where last night only the sea had been, but also half the population of the 'Golfe du Morbihan'. They were there with their welly's on and some were digging out big fat pink wiggly worm things from under the sand while the majority were filling buckets with various shellfish, moules, oysters and other delicasies that reside within innocuous looking shells attached to rocks.

There is a definite pleasure in witnessing such happenings from a 'know nothing about all this' perspective. What I was seeing has been part of this areas natural history since humans first arrived many many thousands of years ago. The bountiful larder of this sea shore sustained those early populations. Today it seems like there is still plenty for all and if it's that easy to keep the larder stocked then why not. Especially if you happen to be of Neolithic personage,  and lets say you have a damm good sideline of digging out bloody big granite stones and planting them in neat rows. I mean, what else do you do? And the more powerful your family the taller the stone and the nearer to the important end of the line you get.

Sounds an OK theory to me!

Postscript - Two more motorhomes arrived this morning (there are five here tonight). The couples know each other and one of the wives speaks a leeeetle Eeeenglish which with my leeetle French informed me all about the oysters and the Moules and all the other speceeeeal and deeeeliciux types of shell fish in their full buckets and basins. She also said they are from Finistere and are here because it is the 'Grande Marie' which I figured out to be the high, and of course low spring tide. So expect more crowds tomorrow flocking to the beaches for gastronomical oyster (there are of course other shellfish!!) delight.




3 comments:

Jurate said...

Beautiful scenery and experiences, of course!

Chris said...

How did you manage to cycle on the beach? Remember I tried that on Gairloch beach and stopped stone dead, and fell on my a**e? :)

Carolyn said...

loving the photos ohh and the blog Steve!