My ‘discovery’ of a ‘new’ Bronze Age site is being taken seriously. But without actual, dated finds – this is still provisional. The strict rule to follow -  if you should be so lucky as to find ‘une vestige néolithique‘ – is first to ‘informe la Mairie de la  commune‘. I have therefore broken Rule [...]

Last year I lost a significant portion of my memory. Fortunately it turned up in an old briefcase last week, and I was delighted to slot it back into its USB port and review some of the dolmens and menhirs I had researched that autumn. And since the ‘theme’ at the moment seems to be [...]

We’re feeling the pinch: economic downturn, petrol-price upturn – it means we have to plan our trips out with care. So we have waited for a bright clear day, and we hope to visit the big well-known menhir of our region at Malves, then on to the little unknown menhir at Guitard – and thence [...]

All the rain that never fell this summer is falling now and will continue to fall for days yet. Which gives me time and excuse enough to work up my latest observations into a Grand Theory. In the course of the last few weeks I have been trying to make sense of the scant information [...]

We’re still up on Le Causse de Siran – and could be here for quite a while yet . . . It’s a big, heart-shaped expanse of featureless garrigue, ribbed with little gullies and sudden ravines – and at its widest it is three kilometers across. If the Peyro-Rousso dolmen marks its western border with [...]

My birthday passed in a small cascade of surprises – and among them was my daughter, over from Cork, keen to go on another dolmen-hunt. This time, I assured her, things would be much more organised. I had found a short account of Paul Ambert’s digs around the hamlet of Fournes, on the ‘causses’ above [...]

Languedoc has been a crossroads of people and cultures and trade since prehistoric times – and our corner of South West France where the river Aude meets the Mediterranean, reveals these traces most particularly. It’s an unassuming but benign river : bringing snowmelt from the Pyrenees, slowing in the fertile plain, before opening into accessible [...]

Without Quid I would never have found many of these places here in my region. Every village – and France is essentially a network of villages – has a dossier listing its vital statistics and attributes. La Mairie collects the data and sends it to Paris, whence it is diffused back to the Nation. Decade [...]

I have yet to return empty-handed from a day of dolmen-hunting, even if I fail to find anything. The map may say ‘Pierre Droite’ but a tractor or a religion may have removed it. I have searched repeatedly for these, and will continue until I find their ‘presence’ or the reason for their absence. These [...]

Drive to Lagrasse and spend a morning there: ‘L’un des plus beaux villages de France’ with an abbey rebuilt by Nimphridius under Charlemagne in 779. It was the temporal and spiritual centre of all Languedoc for many centuries, holding sway from Albi to Zaragoza. Then drive out on the D3, turning left to Tournissan. The [...]