Mostly a sightseeing day, in spite of the dull, overcast conditions. We spent the morning at St Cado, a beautiful little village on an island in the River Etel estuary. While finding somewhere to eat our packed lunch (yes, we have become our parents) we passed through the village of Kerhuen which has its own dolmen. That’s not unusual around here, of course. Pretty much everywhere has its own dolmen.

Kerhuen’s megalith is perched on a small plot of land tightly ringed by bungalows and roads. It’s a patch of scrappy lawn that, in an English village, would probably house a phonebox and a bus stop - a token piece of public land indifferently maintained by the council. The dolmen is average,but notable for the impossibility of photographing it without including overhead power and phone cables and/or bungalows. It was also littered with beer cans, cigarette stubs and sweet wrappers - something we would see many times. Dolmens appear to be places that teenagers can use as clubhouses. I think I would have done the same at that age.

On the one hand, you could think that, in such an unrelentingly suburban environment, it is wonderful and surprising to find a monument built 5,000 or 6,000 years ago. What village wouldn’t benefit from having a piece of history like this?

On the other hand, one can reflect on how this important artefact has been so grudgingly granted its place in this urban sprawl, and how such a parsimonious allotment of space has robbed it of its magic.

Oh well, perhaps if there weren’t so many dolmens in this region, it might have been treated more generously. As it was, I stopped the car and got out to shoot what pictures I could, more out of a sense of duty than any expectation of creating a worthwhile image.

The weather brightened somewhat in the afternoon. We drove to Larmor-Baden to get a look at the Gulf of Morbihan. I’d read so much about the tumulus on the island of Gavrinis - one of the major sites in the region - and felt a little frustrated that the boat trips to the island don’t run at this time of year. But, looking at the map, we thought me might at least get a glimpse of the island.

Standing at the port at Larmor-Baden, we tried to work out which of the many islands was Gavrinis, and deduced that it must be hidden by the small, tree-lined island that seemed close enough to touch. It was only later, having become more accustomed to the small scale of the map, that we realised that island was Gavrinis! The tumulus, however, is on the far side, out of sight.

We drove a little further east, parked, and took a stroll around Ile Berder. This is private property but with a public footpath around its periphery, through stunningly beautiful pine woods. At one point we found a jumble of rocks, a few of them seemingly shaped and carved, cleverly arranged as seats. There was something about them that suggested the carving of the rocks was old. The trouble is, granite always looks ancient. And it can be hard to tell a ruined ancient monument from a collection of boulders. I’d like to know more about this seat, though.

At the southern tip of the Ile Berder, we had a good view of the tiny island of er Lannic. Silhouetted against the bright water, we saw the jagged shapes of its cromlech - a semi-circle of standing stones that curves down into the water, so that half of them are submerged. There is, apparently, a second semi-circular cromlech continuing from the first (so that, together, they made a shape like the number 3), but this is now permanently under water.

This wasn’t always the case. In neolithic times, the water level was as much as 6 metres lower. Most of what is now the Gulf of Morbihan would have been a fertile valley system with three rivers running through it. It makes you wonder what else is under there…