Discovering King Arthur in France...? - Exploring France
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| Yes, I really was that scared! |
The legend of King Arthur, is it just that? A legend? We went to go and try and find out for ourselves. We haven’t heard of King Arthur here in France until this trip out, but our destination was supposed to be where he and his wife, Queen Guinevere, met their end.
This week we went to Fosse Arthour which boarders the departments of Manche and Orne. It is set between a geological fault, called “cluse” and is a summit of sandstone ridges. Today, there is a narrow and 70m deep gorge dug in a rocky bar with loads of large fallen boulders down their sides. The cliffs are made of Armorican sandstone, which is one of the hardest rocks in the primary era, which is why this place has been so well preserved. This is also a mythological area which is home to bedroom chambers in caves of the rock for both the King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. We had read it was impossible to enter the caves but we wanted to find out if that were true (it turns out, yes it is true!)
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| The Kings chamber |
We started our walk of the day by a small cascade. At the bottom of this cascade there is said to be a bottomless abyss that the King and Queen both met their end in. The legend says that the King and Queen had rooms on either side of the cavern. There was a bridge which connected the two which had a genie living under it, who said the King was only allowed to see his wife after sunset. One day, he was too early and rushed to see his Queen, only to be catapulted off the bridge and into the bottomless abyss and that was the end of King Arthur. In despair, the Queen threw herself also into the bottomless abyss, and legend says, their remains are left in the King and Queens chambers. We will let you decide if it’s true or not!
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| Check out Matts stunning photography! |
To get to the Kings chamber, we had to climb up a really steep rocky path which was very close to the edge. We could see climbers equipment buried in the rock faces. It was in fact where the Kings chamber was. After years of the rock freezing and thawing, it had crumbled leaving the chamber impossible to access. The same has happened with the Queens chamber. Bit of a coincidence we thought!
We carried on our walk up the hill to a beautiful view point looking over the landscape of the Mortainais and Domfrontais bocage. This is made up of many trees and orchards and in the distance you can sometimes see Mount Margentin, which is 270m above sea level. Another legend says that sorcerers fly there on Saint John’s Day to perform satanic ceremonies. We couldn’t see that far in the distance is it was a bit hazy, but check out our Instagram to see what we did manage to capture! Just up this hill, was The Calvary of the Rock. A large granite cross that was erected in 1972 to show the boarders between Orne and Manche.
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| On top of the world |
We started to make our decent back down towards the river to try and find the Queens chamber. We crossed over the river and walked along the lake which is an artificial fishing lake built in the 70’s. On our walk, we only came across one other group of people so the winter is a great time to go, we could tell it gets busier in the summer as we came across 4 car parks! And they weren’t small. We carried on our marked route and our next stop was a quarry. This had been quarried for its sandstone and was really really deep. In the recent past, it has been used as a training ground for motocross.
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| Keeping lookout for the Queens chamber |
We finally came across the Queens chamber. We had read that this was meant to be a bit more accessible and more of the chamber could be seen, this wasn’t the case. It was the same as the Kings and a pile of rocks, non the less, we were glad we had visited.
This was a fascinating place, but make sure you do your research before you go as to what’s what. There are no signs on the way round, only an info board right at the very start.
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| Such beautiful colours |
Next week, we’re going into the big scary world of cities. We have wanted to visit Rennes for a while and it’s only an hour or so away, so we’re going to have a look! Join us next Friday for our city adventure!
Don’t forget to check out our links below to see more of our journey and what we get up to day to day.
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