Looking for a place to stay in Rennes... a place to camp : the camping des Gayeulles : a 3-star open all year (Rue Maurice Audin, 35700 Rennes Tel: 00 33 (0)2 99 36 91 22) and located in a really nice park... north-east of Rennes is done for you. You can enjoy the capital of Brittany and tour around... You're not far from the coast...

The camping place is located in Rennes largest park (100 hectares), you may even think you're in the forest but the place is a creation. Back in 1967, the city of Rennes decided to create a park that will open ten years later when the trees have grown a little.
If you're travelling with kids or teenagers, they'll love this place... Leisure facilities for everyone are available...Sometimes you feel like being in the countryside...



... And at times, you enjoy the leisure of the town ...




Soccer fields, tennis courts (02 99 36 59 71) and squash are provided for you... Golfers can try with the kids the mini-golf ... or all lovers of blue water can will have fun in pool area.

Kids will also use swings or slides. You have no excuse to avoid your traditional jogging in nature ...

If you love animals... you can visit the educational farm, located on the park, where children do things "like farmers" ! Rabbits, ponies, goats, chickens and ducks welcome you... Kids participate in daily activities: they feed the animals or press the apple juice to make cider .... You can go for a free visit: Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. (Ferme pédagogique des basses Gayeulles, rue du professeur Maurice Audin, dans le parc des Gayeulles, Tel : 02 99 36 71 73).



Read this article in French : Ferme pédagogique, mini-golf ou balançoires : les loisirs de plein air au parc des Gayeulles à Rennes (Bretagne)

In Brittany, south, you have a nice little sea called le golfe du Morbihan (Gulf of Morbihan) where it is really nice to cruise.
And if you like old stones and megaliths, you'll be amazed by the island of Gavrinis and its cairns.
Back a few centuries ago, when the cairn was erected, the landscape was quite different : the gulf and its 42 islands did not exist. No cruise in the sun... no 10 minutes boattrip from Larmor-Baden ... to reach the island of Gavrinis … Land replaced the sea. There was just a beautiful hill.

The island is today divided into two : one part is a private property (Council of Morbihan would have liked to purchased it but they had no money) ... Stars from Paris bought it : the farm and the dozen hectares of the island became the property of a ... Parisian .... The other tiny part is the cairn !



Back to the huge cairn ...
... It was probably part of a more important megalithic site ... Leaving the island, you will notice that the island in front of the cairn has standing stones (discovered when low tide). They are still standing! Even after billions of tides ! The builders of the Neolithic time were working really well !!!



The monument was built around 3500 BC: it is composed of a dolmen (stone table) covered by a mound of dry stone ... ie a long corridor with stone slabs that leads to a room ... it seems that the corridor is the longest in Brittany and the room is the smallest ...
And as always, my answers/questions are assumptions : no paper trail, no skeletons (Breton soil is too acidic), only ideas and imagination to understand those prehistoric people. We still can not explain these singularities ...
By cons, it seems that the corridor has been intentionally filled with stones at a time ... (the spirits did not want curious minds to destroy the place, they wanted to wait until humanity will be mature enough and concerned to "discover" this awesome vestige) ...

How did those heavy stones get there?
The assumptions are : a river had to pass near the hill Gavrinis ... stones weighing several tons have been brought by reverse flotation (the guide will explain) near the site and then rolled on logs. One of the stones of the dolmen, which is the "roof" ... corresponds to one of the broken menhir in Locmariaquer ...a huge stone over twenty meters broken into three parts ... (do not miss it !)



How do we know that our ancestors did use it as it is recovered ?
As the slab is turned towards the sky, we would never have known it... but fortunatly the cairn has been damaged... a crater at the summit was showing a part of this carved menhir … Therefore no seek of the missing piece of the table des marchants!

Another interesting detail : each stone is decorated with geometric patterns or designs ... A true team of professionnal sculptors and engravers have worked for hours to get this result: perfect lines, without corrections, with regular spaces between curves, precision work on a very hard stone (try to carve granite, you'll see!).
Presumably, the community that built the monument had artists among them !

In short, the history of the monument is exciting ... The site guides will reveal more secrets about the cairn.
You need to pay for the visit and it is only possible from April to November. Book before you go, it is often full... (same thing for accommodation, we had to drive far inland to find a place to sleep !).
For once, if crowds are passionate, there is nothing to complain about!



Read this article in French : Croisière dans le golfe et les îles : Gavrinis