Register here - as a registered user you get more features and fewer ads.
Having recently spent several days in the Carnac area, and having not been there since about 1987, I was wondering how these green fences would make me think, and in many ways I was not looking forward to the experience.
But having now been there again, I will say this. In the late 1980s the major sites were in a disgraceful condition, all bare and worn away, with stones getting toppled, graffitti, rubbish everywhere etc etc. Something needed to be done.
I found this year, that although I couldnt walk amongst the main alignments (there are plenty of others to go to if thats what you want to do) they were beautiful things to look at. The fences are not much higher than a metre, and do not get in the way of the view of the stones, and lets face it, are not really obtrusive at all, unlike the stonehenge barriers. The coaches that bring millions of visitors to the stones drop their herds off, who now walk around the outside for their allotted half an hour, and are not damaging the stones or the ground around them, which in June was full of flowers and colour. And should you really, really want to walk amongst the stones here, you can arrange to do so for the princely sum of €4, not a lot to pay if you ask me. But personally, just seeing all the stones of the main alignments set in their beatiful flower filled areas, with nobody in amongst them, was enough for me, after all, I must have visited about 60 other sites in the area without being charged or kept out by fences.
But I have to agree that I think it is fairly scandalous the state that many of the "minor" sites are being allowed to get into. Many are completely neglected, with all resources directed at just a few sites, and impossible to get to under their covering of gorse and brambles. And perhaps controversially, I think that several of the other sites on the tourist trails are getting seriously damaged by too many visitors, and should perhaps be shut off to save them now. Kercado immediately comes to mind, where the wonderful pristine tumulus and chamber is in serious need of some care and attention, and to stop people climbing all over the top of it - there is now a pathway or two onto the top which have worn away half a metre of covering, with stones getting kicked down all over the place. And it seems to be of no concern to many people who should know better, just how much they are wearing away this beautiful fragile site, the like of which there are very few in its completeness, that they even publish pictures of themselves climbing all over it.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road