I’ve lost count of how many times I looked at the sign and thought, “I must take a look one day”. Then the sign disappeared.

It wasn’t much of a sign, to be sure. Crudely painted, it gave the impression the menhir was the kind of tourist attraction you might find on Craggy Island or some down-at-heel English seaside town – the kind where you pay £5 to guess the weight of a sheep. I suspected I might find the menhir to be a pile of rubble or just a slightly overlarge boulder. And yet, the sign called to me every time we went shopping at Super U in Gorron. It was, after all, right next to the small industrial estate that holds the supermarket and a scattering of light industry.

We’d been told that the path to the menhir was strewn with rubbish – an unpleasant walk. And until recently, that was probably true. But the reason the sign has disappeared is that the whole area has been cleaned up. There are the beginnings of a new car park next to the main Ambrieres road. From there, you walk across a a picnic area and into a patch of woodland. The industrial area next door is largely invisible, though clearly audible during work hours.

The path curves around as it leads into increasingly picturesque countryside. You might be tempted, as I was, to continue following it, down a lane bordered by old and dense bocage hedging, full of mature trees. In fact, to find the menhir, you have to turn off, through a gap in the bocage (currently with no signposting) and take a narrow track that leads along a row of trees on the other side of which is a small stream.

The menhir is soon visible. It stands in the field on the opposite side of the stream, but someone has thoughtfully provided a small wooden footbridge. The field is used for cattle, so there’s a single-strand electric fence – and you need to pick your path carefully.

The standing stone is huge – perhaps 3m high. It stands hard by the stream. And although it’s still quite close to that industrial estate, and right on the edge of the town, the setting is tranquil and timeless.

The lighting was imperfect on this first visit. We turned up at 16:30 on a October afternoon. The stone was in shade from the surrounding trees and the sun was lighting a patch of the field beyond rather too brightly. I need to revisit earlier in the day. But I will: this site is only eight minutes from home. I’ve got a feeling it will become a regular haunt.

Back at the car park, I noticed that the house across the road, perched on a rise in the terrain and maybe 300m from the stone, is called ‘La Roche’ (the rock). Presumably, the name is much older than the house and might stand some investigation. At the roadside, there’s a calvary – a Christian cross. These are a common sight in France, and while the Christian church is known to have usurped many pagan sites, one shouldn’t read too much into the presence of the cross. Local councils often erect them as a way of using up the year’s budget, and this one appears to date from 2006!

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.