A Walk on the Wild Side - Les Landes de Locarn

I recently bought a book of walks in the Côtes d'Armor, which is my region of France, not to be confused with the Côtes d'Armour which is somewhere else entirely. My region is lush and fertile, wild and rugged, and with a beautiful coastline. Parfait!

I've chosen a couple of walks that should be lovely, but here's one that I took often while I was living in Brittany full-time, and one that holds good memories for me of walking with three dogs and someone who was, at that time, rather special to me...

One day, when I'm done with protecting cyber space and have had my fill of complex, obfuscated, malicious code and trickery, I will return to Brittany to live a quiet, peaceful life. Perhaps I'll run the B&B that I'd planned when I first moved to France, perhaps I'll just take people on trips and tours around Brittany, perhaps I'll write, perhaps ...

Well, who knows what's around the next corner?        

 A Sunday stroll around Les Landes de Locarn


This land has been inhabited since the Paleolithic times when hunter gatherers stalked these hills. When they evolved into the first farmers and homestead builders of the Neolithic period they began to erect megaliths.

This menhir served a purpose, had meaning for those people over 2000 years ago, today it stands like a crusty old spinster, cold and aloof.

ignore her, pass by respectfully, you don't want to catch her eye....

A conifer stands independent and alone, like a young adolescent poised on the brink of adulthood

Smile at the confidence of youth as you wander past her....









 

The walk takes you down from the moorland to the gorge where huge granite giants lie in a mass of confusion amid fertile green maidens

clamber over the rocks with caution, a sudden slip could snap a mere mortal's limb

this stone sculpture pushes aside the feminine trees like a dominant male interloper

walk on dry brown leaves up the slope and ignore the crusty old man...













Like the lace veils of young girls attending their first communion

gaze upwards until you feel as giddy as these giggling girls....










Matronly conifers stand in a gossiping huddle on the heathland as you emerge from the gorge

don't try to listen as you pass them, the muttering of matrons is not for your ears...








Finally walking past an ancient woodland

The branches on these trees hung like feathery fronds, mosses draped over outstretched limbs like the tattered tassels of a cheap woman's wrap, bracken at their feet like torn fishnet stockings


and in the green, green depths all is silent and still as if holding a huge collective arboreal breath until the walkers have passed by