Merlin

This morning we decided to find some magic, fairies and tombs here in the Celtic corner of France; Brittany, Bretagne, Breizh.

There was rain and thunder to add to the day. 

We found Merlin's tomb after a short walk through a dense mysterious forest called the Brocéliande.  

The tomb was originally a Neolithic stone dolman, surrounded by a stone circle.  The circle is still there, but robbers broke up the dolman looking for Merlin's treasure.  Dumbheads.

We continued down the path looking for fairies.  We found a snail/ PNW slug instead.

I told Tony, ...I'd rather see a fairy than a snail...  yes I would... if I could....

And off we went into Paul Simon land...

(Leave a comment if you got that reference.)

Next we found the Fountain of Youth - JUST in time.

So youth, or giardia? Probably worth it.

We continued walking, wondering how old the rock walls were that these trees had grown up on and through.

 We came to a Cairn cropping.

Who meditates this hard?  This pic is about half of them.

We wanted to find Merlin's Bench, which is part of the megalithic heritage of this region ( next post).   But what we found was the Golden Tree in the forest called The Valley of No Return.

Note: this is Google worthy.

In 1990 there was a forest fire here that wiped out most of the trees.  The community was devastated and volunteered, planting 500,000 trees.  An artist covered this standing, burned tree with gold leaf as a memorial.  Today, 30 years later, we walked through a forest.

Pretty cool.

We didn't get to Merlin's Chair because it was a rocky climb and it was just too wet.

We did see a pond where fairies admire themselves though.  It's called the Fairy Mirror.

We got to drive through some gorgeous country never really sure where we were going.

We met a cow, and his best friend, the Sanglier, Pumbaa.