One spe­cial trip, at my request, was to the chapel of Saint Gildas. Gildas is well-known to those who study Eng­lish his­to­ry in the “dark ages”, because his De Excidio et Con­ques­tu Bri­tan­ni­ae is the first writ­ten his­to­ry of Britain. In fact, it is pret­ty much the only doc­u­men­tary source for fifth and sixth cen­tu­ry Britain. Bede’s His­to­ry doesn’t appear until the year 731. But Gildas spent part of his career on the con­ti­nent (he is sup­posed to have slain a drag­on on a brief vis­it to Rome), and specif­i­cal­ly in Mor­bi­han, where he died. There are two writ­ten biogra­phies of Gildas on which we depend for infor­ma­tion, but they were writ­ten respec­tive­ly in the ninth and twelfth cen­turies, and tell very dis­sim­i­lar sto­ries. The ear­li­est life relates that Gildas con­vert­ed the hea­then of the Blavet val­ley by stand­ing upon a great rock over­look­ing the riv­er and shout­ing his exhor­ta­tions. That sort of thing, appar­ent­ly, worked in those days. When some­one has already slain a drag­on, he prob­a­bly has a suf­fi­cient­ly force­ful per­son­al­i­ty to pull it off. Any­way, the rock is still there, with a medieval chapel at its foot, and the place is won­der­ful­ly atmos­pher­ic. It being before the tourist sea­son, Didi­er and I had it all to our­selves. Gildas lived, with one acolyte, in a tiny grot­to under­neath the rock, still acces­si­ble, until he returned to his monastery on the coast and com­plet­ed Con­ques­tu Bri­tan­ni­ae. While the late medieval chapel was closed, I have found a pic­ture of its interior.