{"id":5505,"date":"2014-04-27T17:15:51","date_gmt":"2014-04-27T21:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=5505"},"modified":"2018-08-24T15:57:39","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T19:57:39","slug":"sunday-april-25-2014-in-the-forests-of-the-vallee-du-blavet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=5505","title":{"rendered":"Sunday, April 27, 2014 \u2014 In the forests of the Vall\u00e9e du Blavet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"14-04-27<\/a>

A maze of mists and shadows.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s easy to under\u00adstand why it was so hard for the Romans, and then the French, to con\u00adquer Brit\u00adtany. The land resem\u00adbles, as I said yes\u00adter\u00adday, the Ozarks or West Vir\u00adginia in its basic sur\u00adface struc\u00adture. Brit\u00adtany shares the same North Atlantic winds and cur\u00adrents that turn Eng\u00adland into a sog\u00adgy mess. There are creeks every\u00adwhere. Every tree and rock is slimy with moss. The ground cov\u00ader is thick. There are climb\u00ading vines cling\u00ading to every decid\u00adu\u00adous tree. Except where the ground is lev\u00adel, it\u2019s slip\u00adpery foot\u00ading \u2014 and it\u2019s sel\u00addom lev\u00adel. This for\u00adest con\u00adtains an amaz\u00ading vari\u00adety of trees. Call\u00ading it \u201cmixed for\u00adest\u201d is an under\u00adstate\u00adment. Oaks are every\u00adwhere, and so are an odd-look\u00ading sil\u00adver birch. There are also spruce and the occa\u00adsion\u00adal pine. One large stand of spruce I passed through was par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlar\u00adly creepy, a con\u00adfus\u00ading maze of mist and shad\u00adows. Every\u00adthing about this for\u00adest makes for slow going, and the under\u00adgrowth quick\u00adly swal\u00adlow up any foot\u00adpath that isn\u2019t con\u00adstant\u00adly used.<\/p>\n

That was the case of the trail I fol\u00adlowed in search of a lit\u00adtle-known clus\u00adter of Neolith\u00adic men\u00adhirs. I start\u00aded out on a clear\u00adly marked trail, but before long I was in trou\u00adble. The trail turned faint, then vague, then van\u00adished alto\u00adgeth\u00ader. Pro\u00adceed\u00ading by dead reck\u00adon\u00ading was dif\u00adfi\u00adcult. With alter\u00adna\u00adtive\u00adly clear and cloudy skies, and the dense cov\u00ader break\u00ading up the light, there was lit\u00adtle help to be got\u00adten from the sun. For\u00adtu\u00adnate\u00adly, there was an ancient wall buried in the for\u00adest. It was no dif\u00adfer\u00adent from the hun\u00addreds of walls I had seen form\u00ading field bound\u00adaries on farms, except that it was nowhere near any fields and it had four-hun\u00addred year old oaks grow\u00ading on it. What\u00adev\u00ader farm it for\u00admer\u00adly demarked had van\u00adished long ago. Nev\u00ader\u00adthe\u00adless, it served well as a fixed line to ori\u00adent me. In the end, I found what I was look\u00ading for.<\/p>\n

Mor\u00adbi\u00adhan has thou\u00adsands of men\u00adhirs and oth\u00ader mega\u00adlith\u00adic struc\u00adtures. Scat\u00adtered ones, like this minor clus\u00adter, which obvi\u00adous\u00adly attract\u00aded lit\u00adtle inter\u00adest from any\u00adone, as well as the vast align\u00adments of stand\u00ading stones at Carnac, 50km to the south.<\/p>\n

As I stum\u00adbled through this leafy labyrinth, I imag\u00adined what it must have been like for some grum\u00adbling Roman sol\u00addier try\u00ading to make his way through this stuff in pur\u00adsuit of native Celts who were not too keen on the bless\u00adings of Roman Civ\u00adi\u00adliza\u00adtion. Slip\u00adpery trac\u00adtion, con\u00adstant rain, and a poten\u00adtial angry woad-paint\u00aded Celt behind every tree. This was clas\u00adsic ter\u00adri\u00adto\u00adry for guer\u00adril\u00adla resis\u00adtance. In fact, the Romans only defeat\u00aded the local tribe, the Veneti, when they got lucky in a naval bat\u00adtle. The Veneti had bet\u00adter ships and were bet\u00adter sailors. But the Romans caught them off guard and destroyed their fleet in the Gulf of Mor\u00adbi\u00adhan. Then, petu\u00adlant as always, they cap\u00adtured all the land forts and then slaugh\u00adtered almost the entire pop\u00adu\u00adla\u00adtion, save for the few who made it into the hills. Oth\u00ader, more docile peas\u00adants from Roman Gaul were import\u00aded to replace them.<\/p>\n

All of which calls to mind anoth\u00ader hilly coun\u00adtry\u00adside I once knew well, long ago, and anoth\u00ader slaugh\u00adter of inno\u00adcents. But I\u2019m due to attend an evening of tra\u00addi\u00adtion\u00adal Bre\u00adton dance and music, so I\u2019ll get to that later.<\/p>\n

\"14-04-27<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s easy to under\u00adstand why it was so hard for the Romans, and then the French, to con\u00adquer Brit\u00adtany. The land resem\u00adbles, as I said yes\u00adter\u00adday, the Ozarks or West Vir\u00adginia in its basic sur\u00adface struc\u00adture. Brit\u00adtany shares the same North \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,940],"tags":[1443,1445,1464,1442,1467],"class_list":["post-5505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-blog","category-am-blog-2014","tag-blavet","tag-brittany","tag-menhir","tag-morbihan","tag-veneti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5505"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5575,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5505\/revisions\/5575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}