Combourg and environs

Chateau de Combourg

I've been staying in Combourg, revisiting the wonderful chateau and its English-style park which are so evocative of Chateaubriand's formative years here, intensely described in Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, published soon after the great writer's death in 1848. And what a remarkable man he was - explorer in North America, soldier, author, politicial figure, opponent of Napoléon, royalist, journalist and diplomat (ambassador to London in 1822) - all roles examined in the powerfully emotional prose and beautiful language of the Memoirs. For all his far-flung careers and final resting-place on a little island off St-Malo, I can't help feeling that his spirit lingers strongest here, where he felt the first stirrings of the all-possessing exhiliration and hopelessness of a passionate nature that was to earn him the title of Father of Romanticism.
There was also time to seek out a little known menhir of great size and presence, rather unusually placed on a high ridge not far from Broualan.