Wednesday 5th June 2019

This morning we made the short journey south to the Menhirs of Monteneuf.

This is a truly stunning megalithic site dating from the neolithic period.

It is impossible for us to know why the people of that time went to the extraordinary effort of dressing and then erecting these enormous stones. 

There must have been a very important reason to erect the stones and a high level of social organisation in order to do it.

There are vast numbers of orchids in flower at the site.

Nearby there is an experimental archaeology display showing how the stones might have been transported.....

 

...... and how they might have been erected.

We moved west and stopped for the day at the aire de camping cars in the town of Malestroit.

The town is on the Nantes to Brest Canal.

We walked into town. There are some very old houses.

Here's the square opposite the church.

An unusual gargoyle on the church wall.

 

Strange old carvings on the corner of a house.

Inside the church there are some interesting recently uncovered pictures of animals painted onto the ceiling. 

The Catholic Church knows when it's onto a good thing. As camper vanning is so popular in France they've decide to make Saint Gilles the patron saint of camper vanners and hold an event here in August to celebrate it!

 

We got our bikes out from under the bed and went for a ride along the canal towpath.

We saw these girls admiring a weir!?

It rained from time to time while we were out.

We saw some canoeists.

We passed a boat going through a lock.

After 6 kilometres in the direction of Nantes we came to a towpath closure so we turned around and returned to our van.

We're parked down the far end of the aire. Here's the view out of the side of our van.

Today we travelled 33 miles (53 kilometres) in our van and 7.5 miles (12 kilometres) on our bikes. We are at N47.81388 W2.38432

Malestroit     Street View