28 Our local village, & a day out: the lost lands, a menhir and a trefoil chapel

Buses. I know. Nothing for a couple of weeks then two posts at once. I’m a bit flaky at the moment; I’ve not been well. I wrote this post a week or two ago. Hope you enjoy it.

(Top scallop photo by Bea Grundbacher)

I mentioned in an earlier post, I think #4, that the local village is on one of the Camino Frances pilgrimage roads leading across the country to Santiago de Compostella in northern Spain. The village fountain, which sadly no longer works, still bears the coquille Saint Jacques, the scallop shell symbol worn by every self-respecting pilgrim on their way to his (Santiago’s – Saint Iago, Jago’s, St James’) shrine in Compostella. I doubt whether this road sees many actual Camino pilgrims, but it’s also a GR – Grande Randonnée – the long-distance walking paths that the French do so well. Nonetheless, I’m not sure I’ve ever met a walker on it either.

The village is not thriving, though the local Friday market in the pretty water park draws quite a few people to its stalls, bar and music on a Friday late afternoon. (Many villages in Brittany, including some hamlets and outlying farms, offer weekly markets, mostly starting late afternoon.) I’ve been delighted to see how many of the stalls in the local markets offer home-grown organic food: veg, breads, cheeses, pies, home-made goodies.

In the same earlier post I wrote of the two girls who had opened a café-bar here late last year (there is nothing other than a small roadside restaurant catering mainly to ouvriers, workers, in the area). At the time, in winter, they opened several days of the week from 7am till 1am the next morning. Somehow it is difficult to inject life into this village, it seems; so I wasn’t surprised, though I was greatly saddened, when a notice went up on the bar door saying that they had attempted to bring conviviality to the village but had been disappointed by the (lack of) response or support, so that from May 1st they were closing except for Friday and Saturday afternoons and evenings. I went in for coffee and opened my mouth to say ‘Surely in tourist season you will do much better?’ before realising that this village is truly not a tourist destination.

Village life here is probably not dissimilar to that in England a few decades ago. Market might be the week’s highlight – which I completely understand as, peasants that we are, it’s ours too! – following in the long tradition of ‘farmer’ and ‘farmer’s wife’ heading off for a social event, though in a car, more’s the pity, rather than a horse and cart. And we, on a Thursday, head to Huelgoat, albeit not with our own produce to sell – we do have some now, but don’t have the right to sell it – where the market is huge and colourful and offers most of what we might still need to buy (increasingly less, as we went suddenly from sowing and resowing seeds and eating a lot of perennial kale to a glut of courgettes, broad beans, beetroot, chard, onions – satisfyingly large, this year – and still some potatoes, despite the blight which may have taken the tomatoes; I’m still waiting to see how far they will succumb). Then we have coffee and a very good buckwheat crêpe in the unassuming but wonderful café-bar at the entrance to the forest.

There is, of course, as in most country places, an occasional fête, commonly in the summer; and many of the proliferation of little country chapels here celebrate the Pardon, events for the Saint’s Day of their parish: sometimes a procession or short pilgrimage, but mostly secular – a community meal (invariably moules-frites – which puts it off-limits for us as of course we don’t eat shellfish, though I happily eat chips – when moules are in season during the months with an ‘r’ in them). This might be followed, here in Basse-Bretagne where the Breton language and customs are still a little more alive than in the rest of Brittany, by a Fest Noz – an evening of traditional Breton music and dancing, where everyone, young and old, joins in with the simple steps, little fingers linked at shoulder-height. At darkfall, often there are fireworks.

A day out: the lost lands, a menhir and a trefoil chapel
I have needed time out, and a treat, for quite a while. We don’t do many excursions here, despite the beauty of Brittany. This is mostly because the land and the dogs keep us so busy, but also because my environmental puritanism won’t let me drive too often just for ‘fun’ and pleasure: a dimension I find my life is currently lacking, however. It’s also crazy: living somewhere with so many beautiful spots to visit or revisit, and barely going off the secluded land one tends.

My dear friend here, Wendy Mewes, who has written many books on the history and culture of Brittany and shares a number of my interests, had tickets for an exhibition in a manoir in southern Finistère concerning the ‘lost lands’, drowned places of history and legend; something that interests me enormously. Think Lyonesse, between Cornwall and Scilly; Ys, here in the Baie de Douarnenez; the mythical Hy Brasil somewhere out in the Atlantic (‘the blessed isles of the west’ from Celtic mythology?); then there’s the Hesperides, another claimant of that title; Atlantis; Mu and so on. There is in fact also a sunken forest between Penzance/Marazion and St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, as well as Borth, Aberystwyth, and Cantref y Gwaelod in Wales. One way and another I’ve written quite a lot about such places, with plenty more to write – I took sections on this out of Book One of A Spell in the Forest ready, one day, to be part of Book 11.

We took one of those beautiful empty wooded winding roads down towards Scaer where, Wendy remembered, there is a tall menhir; maybe 6 or more metres. It’s the menhir de St Jean at the edge of a field after a brief walk through a copse, and is a beauty.

The exhibition was interesting, if a little slight on detail, but it was a good visit, enhanced by a good lunch. Wendy in her kindness had suddenly been concerned that there might not be a vegan option for me (there was), so had very thoughtfully put together some avocado and tomato sandwiches for me, with a selection of fruits and nuts as well. I ate both the café lunch and the sandwiches, and remembered how good it is to treat oneself sometimes!

The final treat was driving back, exploring some lanes, coming across a little trefoil-shaped chapel of St Cado: one that even Wendy didn’t know (images above and below).

Later
In the south, a half-moon glides high between the tall old oak and the tall old cherry. As I write this, the sun’s in late Cancer while the full moon is in Capricorn, opposite the sun, as the full moon always is: a slightly tricky placing, as the Moon’s home sign is Cancer and so she is opposite her home too. It’s high summer and the summer already feels old. The many shades of green of May and June are now more uniform, darker. Birds are quiet in the late evening now; no dusk chorus, just the odd bedtime twitter. On a hot day, such as we are just now having as I wrote this a week ago and the weather has changed, they barely sing in the daytime either. A pipistrelle bat dives and flitters in and out of the chestnut, oak and cherry leaves; and is joined by another. And now, a barn owl, probably quartering the North Field with its exploding vole population, for its young.

And to my enormous pleasure and delight, in the evenings we’re being visited by up to 30 swallows, an extended family, fishing over our unmown unsprayed meadows. What an honour in a very swallowless year.