Taking stock

Menhir de Champ Dolent, Dol-de-Bretagne

After my annual long visit to Combourg, where I have been based to complete a chapter called the Devil's trajectory around Dol-de-Bretagne, it's time to take stock of the year's work and my progress along a very decided path for 2019. I arrived home to find author's copies of my little saints' guide  waiting - one objective achieved and a pleasing result of a great deal of effort. Much of the research was done for another saints' project last year, but trying to sift a mass of material for meaningful synopsis is not easy, and to convey complex issues in compact form is a veritable skill. Introduction to the Breton Saints forms a third volume in the series that began with guides to Huelgoat and the Monts d'Arrée, a format that has been much appreciated by very many people. There may well be a fourth topic in 2020, given the success so far.

As to the main purpose of my year, the completion of Wayfaring in Little Britain, the journey is far from finished, although I have made significant progress lately. This is the third year of trying: thwarted by serous illness for the last two, I am finding the physical demands of travel, walking and research extremely hard to cope with, but am determined to finish the manuscript by the end of the year, even though the last bit of route coverage is not scheduled until December 26th! With the encouragement of the few readers who have glimpsed the content of this elusive book, this theme of hard-won achievement has crept into the text - quite a change for me to write personally, but it perhaps it is time to be honest about the demands of walking and searching against a backdrop of pain and difficulty. Most people writing about history in the context of landscape are serious walkers covering 30-odd kilometres a day without too much trouble. That has never been the case for me, but I hope there is equal merit in a book constructed around hardship, where a day's walking for a healthier person may turn into two or even three for me on occasion and where considerably more logistical planning is needed.

St Samson's mitre, Mont Dol

I hope it can be done. The themes of journeys and different types of walking from neolithic ritual through Roman roads to saints' stories and medieval pilgrimage are fundamental to the discovery of Brittany's landscape and history. It will be a final summary of all my painstaking work in this field over many years, as next year is to be devoted to something rather different...

Start of the Devil's trajectory on Mont Dol

The Seven Sacred Hills of Brittany

Menez Hom

The magical number of seven embraces sacred summits as it does founding saints in Brittany, but whilst the saints have their own cathedrals, the hill-tops, scattered throughout the region, are shared by mixed religious associations, pagan and Christian, ancient and more recent.

The westernmost is Menez Hom, end of the Montagnes noires chain, an elongated open hill offering views of the Atlantic and the Aulne basin. It is particularly popular with radio-activated aircraft buffs and hang-gliderists today, but early morning visits can still give a memorable solitary experience above the mist. A statue of a Gallo-Roman goddess, identified as Minerva/Brigit was discovered here by a farmer in 1913.

Mont-St-Michel-de-Brasparts

Mont St-Michel de Brasparts, topped by a tiny chapel, is an iconic image of inland Brittany, one of the high points of the Monts d’Arrée. This area of wild moorland landscape and rocky crags above marshes and the modern reservoir has ancient connections with worship of a pagan Sun god and in more modern times, Druid ceremonies during solstice celebrations. The legendary entrance to the Celtic underworld was said to be nearby in the peat-bogs.

Mene Bré, another summit with a chapel visible from afar, this time dedicated to the blind St Hervé, is in Côtes d’Armor, near Guingamp. It offers exceptional views, especially north and west across the Trégor. Here the famous council of powerful secular and religious figures is said to have gathered to excommunicate the tyrannical 6^th century lord Conomor. The earliest chapel on the spot may have dated back to that time.

Menez Bré

Not far away lies Menez Bel-air (336m), one of the Monts du Mené, where any sense of atmosphere is marred by a large rather ugly mid 19^th century chapel and an intrusive communications antenna. There are, however, great views from certain points of the rolling landscape of central Brittany. It was once a site of worship of Belenos, the Sun god, with Druid rituals of purification of cattle at the Beltane festival in May.

In Morbihan, the wooded hill-top of Mane Guen – of modest height at 155m - also has a small chapel of St Michel. The name means the White Mountain, thanks to a miracle in 1300 when it was lit by an intense white light for several days, and various other legends have added to its notoriety. One claims that the body of a dragon lies under the contours and the chapel was founded on its head. A granite boulder is rumoured to have been a pagan ritual sacrifice altar.

Mont Dol

In the Marches of Brittany, east of St Malo, lies Mont Dol, a small table-shaped protuberance rising from flat marshland. An exceptionally rich historical evolution has seen pagan Mithraic rites, evidenced by the discovery of two taurobolia, altars for the sacrifice of bulls with gratings to allow the blood to shower initiates waiting below. Today a tiny chapel to St Michel, who fought the Devil for sway here, stands on the highest point, and, rather too near it, a tower topped by a huge statue of the Virgin.

Visible in the distance from Mont Dol is the familiar World Heritage and pilgrimage site of Mont St Michel, once in Brittany but now by the vagaries of river Couesnon, fractionally over the border into Normandy. It has an imposing position just off-shore in a vast bay with one of furthest tide recoils in the world. Recent works have seen the causeway destroyed and a replacement bridge allowing tidal flow all around the island. Neolithic megaliths on this conical hill have disappeared to leave the stage for the spectacular abbey perched on the summit.

A devil of a route

Dol-de-Bretagne cathedral

My month in eastern Brittany is nearly at an end and the first stage of research for my new book in these parts complete. One of the routes I'll be writing about follows an exceptional course through religious and cosmological affinities from the Neolithic to current times. Here are some hints at the potential of the material I'm pursuing.

From his perch on Mont Dol the Devil saw St Samson, an incomer from Wales and one of the seven founding saints of Brittany, busily constructing his cathedral at Dol-de-Bretagne two miles away. Furiously he tore up a huge stone and lobbed it at the offending structure, smashing one of the two towers. But the granite projectile bounced off its target and came to rest upright 3km away. It is better known today as the Menhir du Champ Dolent, a standing-stone of just over 9m in height, raised somewhere around 2500BC. It is solitary now, but actually stands in a straight line with two other large menhirs between the remarkable passage grave at Tressé in the forest of Mesnil and Mont St Michel, where once there were also neolithic monuments.

Menhir du Champ Dolent

Below the open plateau dominated by this enormous stone is the rural village of Carfantin and the fontaine of St Samson in an little enclave of verdure. He arrived in this spot from Great Britain via the river Guyoult, and after curing a local nobleman's daughter through exorcism, was given land here in an idyllic location for a first monastery. This spring might also have a significant connection with the Arthurian legend, but I digress...

Fontaine de Saint Samson

Continuing along the river valley, now managed in a series of lakes and ponds as a nature reserve and flood deterrent system, I am soon in the centre of Dol-de-Bretagne, a town of singular historical significance and resplendent architectural remains. The oldest house in Brittany (12^th century) still stands in the main street, surrounded by colourful half-timbered buildings from later centuries. This Grande rue des Stuarts is a reminder that the Scottish dynasty started here, as Walter Fitzalan, from the local noble family, was appointed 'steward' in Scotland for King David 1st, a position that became hereditary. Although the chateau of Dol is long gone, a powerful stretch of ramparts looms over the flat marshland - somewhat more under cultivation today but still unmistakably a marais - that surrounds the city.

Oldest house in Brittany

The Gothic cathedral, rebuilt after destruction by King John in 1203, holds many secrets and oddities. Apart from the single tower, it has the only double well known on such a site: one shaft inside the cathedral, one just outside, the two joined by a flooded underground gallery. A magnificent 13^th century window dominates the interior, and the ornate tomb (1507) of bishop Thomas James features a representation of the Holy Grail which is lit by a ray of sun on the summer solstice. It is not impossible that the Grail itself may once have lodged in Dol, but that's another story.

Leaving the town down steps from the ramparts, a little lane leads out north across the marsh, under the expressway and later the railway line, meandering through fields of maize and drainage channels lined by soft reeds and wetland flowers, all the way to Mont Dol, a table-shaped hill curiously rising ahead out of the ubiquitous flatness.

One of the seven sacred hills of Brittany, it has been occupied and exploited since the earliest times. Mammoths, rhinoceros and aurochs roamed here, pursued by men living in caves on the steep sides. A neolithic settlement once stood on the summit, not far from a later Roman temple to Mithras, complete with two special tables for bull sacrifice. There is also a little chapel to St Michel, for here he fought with Devil and threw him down into a deep chasm in one legend, leaving only the trace of his demonic buttocks and claws on a famous rock. In another, he tricked his greatest adversary into accepting Mont Dol in exchange for Mont St Michel, making him believe it to have a gleaning palace of glass, which turned out to be ice... No wonder the Devil was so furious when he saw St Samson building that damn cathedral just across the way.

Merlin's tomb

Which of these do you think makes the best tomb for Merlin? You might like to bear in mind that he was supposedly trapped forever in a grotte. The top picture is so-called Merlin's Tomb from the forest of Paimpont, heavily marketed as the Brocéliande of Arthurian legend (for no very good reason). It is in fact the remains of a neolithic dolmen. There are no caves in that forest, so nothing can be made to fit in the way they've managed with the Valley of No Return (nice valley, shame it was once publicised somewhere else entirely until a factory was built there). The second photo shows a veritable grotto, tucked under the rim of Mont Dol near Dol-de-Bretagne. This area on the eastern edge of Brittany was once covered by a great forest. And wait a minute! Wasn't Brocéliande supposed to be near the sea and in the Marches de Bretagne?
Of course Brocéliande is a literary creation, first mentioned by Wace in the 12th century Roman de Rou. He was a Norman with Plantagenet patrons, just up the road from Dol and Combourg, once in that eastern forest. He said he visited the forest himself. And Geoffrey of Monmouth who started the whole Arthur saga in its recognisible form today may also have ties with Dol. But no-one could possible doubt all the hype surrounding the Arthurian forest of Paimpont - could they?