Day 13: Sunday 21.viii.2016. Airvault to Chef-Boutonne

Well this is a short revisit partly because I had only these images and because I can recall nothing really of the journey beyond the image prompted recall that that was a rather fine dolmen!

However, re-reading my posts from back in 2016 was interesting. The first, about confidentiality, copyright and sharing because those themes remain crucial for me (and I spent a good hour this morning improving my page about the BSQ which underlined that my principles haven't changed). The other, a much more pragmatic one about handlebars (!) helped me remember that this day had been a moderately tough one as tried to up my distances to be sure of making it to Compostella in time to be back for a family wedding in Scotland.

But back to that dolmen (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolmen for a good wikipedia entry). That one is known in French as the Pierre-Levée des Sept Chemins: raised stone of the seven roads. There's quite a lot about it in French at https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Lev%C3%A9e_des_Sept_Chemins but all the dates I see there are about its discovery in the 19th Century and excavations in the late 20th Century. So I think we just go with the idea that dolmens like this tend to date from 4000–3000 BCE. I remember pausing to take some poor 'photos and then moving on but wondering how much the locality had changed since it had been constructed and who had done the work to get it up and why. This is the only OK image I had (I was having problems with images flaring in the bright sun).

OK, now back in 2026 I need to get some more days done to get back in synch with the dates back on the pelerinage itself.

Added 29.viii.26.