A can of worms, and something fluffy to cover it up again

With daily blogging, I've taken occasionally to having a look at my stats information, something I've not done for a very long time. I don't place any importance on or faith in them at all, of course. I'm sometimes a bit curious about referring sites and URLs though; many of them seems to be weird kind of feed, aggregation sites whatever, things I've never understood. A really odd one though, that in the last week, I've had thirty-three referrals from the Spectator, specifically, it seems, their blogs page. This led me to follow the link back to try to find out how this might have happened, how on earth Box Elder could have been linked to from anyone involved with the publication in any way shape or form. This in turn led me to spending rather too much time reading there, which has left my soul abraded*, and I am none the wiser as to how the link came about. I won't put in a link to the Spectator as I feel that would only make things worse. Fortunately they have just told me I need to subscribe to read any more, which will put a stop to my masochism. Though of course there's always the incognito window option, which is a useful way of getting round subscription-free limits (though don't tell anyone I told you and please spare me the moralising about paying for content, mea culpa, etc) and also those times when you can't quite resist reading something somewhere like the Daily Mail or Breitbart but you don't want anyone, not even an algorithm, to know. But be warned, you will still feel dirty. Also, you can't get Adblock.

So, I think I will just raid my Pinterest miscellaneous board to cheer myself up:

always mean to make some of these when I go to the beach, but never remember. We don't have many pebbles like this on our local beaches mind. These are set up and taken by Scottish photographer Iain Blake.

Sagrada Familia. Never been there, may do one day but I don't have much yen to go south any more. (Came via tumblr, but watermarked by the photographer).

Samuel Salcedo, apparently.

Street art, can't seem to track this one's origins down. There's some wonderful street art on Pinterest. I wish I had the kind of mind that could see the potential in things like this.

And finally something really cuddly and heartwarming. Hope they've both had their flea drops.

* liberal cry-baby, and proud.

Rolled round in earth's diurnal course...

Again from our September Finistère trip. In fact, these are from a day when we drove east, and finished up on our Côtes d'Armor side of the department line. 

The coastal stretch east from where we stay grows more and more wiggly and remote with little in the way of settlement, and it's quite a nice surprise to come upon Locquirec, one of those rather archetypal northern French seaside resorts that puts one in mind of Balbec or M Hulot or some such. In fact there was a film made there back in the 70s called L'hôtel de la Plage,  to which it seems it owes some of its popularity, which sounds like it might be kind of naff but fun, with places we know in it, so I think I might have to get hold of it some time, except it's so obscure and French you can't get a subtitled DVD, but that probably wouldn't matter too much. Anyway, the place has a busy feel, even out of season, with clearly a fairly outgoing all-year-round community. 

So after we'd eaten lightly and pleasantly (fish soup and prawns and winkles and a glass of white, I think), at the Brasserie de la Plage we travelled past the numerous prettywhite sandy beaches down the river mouth and stopped and walked up the other side, by this time in the department next door.  

I wasn't inclined to take photos, but then an odd glaucous streak in the rocks on the beach caught my eye, 

and before I knew it I'd taken a whole stack of rock pictures,

and stone pictures,

and of course there turned out to be millions of micro-landscapes and characters within the rocks and stones,

and trees.

~

(There are some more on the web album)

Woodhenge by the island of Sterec

The Bay of Morlaix from where we stay with its many rocks and islands and changing tones always reminds me of something Heather Dohollau said in a poem about seeing the Bréhat archipelago for the first time, that it was 'like a Leonardo or a Patinir', so that I half-expect to see a wonderfully out-of scale St Christopher half a mile high and confounding all perspective, striding across the water towards us.

We set off from the door at Kerbiriou, and for the first time walked around the entire edge of the small peninsular, skirting round the cairn of Barnenez, which is its main claim to fame. We did once pay admission and visit the cairn, but I'm afraid that, as with many prehistoric sites and monuments, it doesn't do a great deal for me. I have difficulty connecting, perhaps the imagination required to fill in the gaps is beyond me, but also the amount of artifice and making it up of those charged with preserving them sometimes seems unconvincing.  Tom, who's done a bit of archaeology, grumbles rather about the French tendency to rebuild and reconstruct, but in fact in many later sites, such as mediaeval castles, I quite enjoy this, though I appreciate it might not always be quite authentic, and deny one the pleasure of ruins.

So anyway, this time we didn't go to the cairn, but followed the coastal path. At the top of the peninsular is the island of Sterec, about which I can find nothing on the web in English or French but images, which rather reflects how delightfully unknown and unfêted this whole small corner beyond the cairn is.  It's one of those part-time islands, like the Île de Callot, which you can walk to at low tide, but I'm not sure what's there when you get there, and anyway on this occasion we couldn't.

But no matter, because what I found at the bottom of the steps and the top of the causeway, filled me with more joy than any reconstructed bit of prehistory and quite as much as a gallery full of Patinirs: posts.

I suggested Tom find himself a rock and sit down; I'd be a while.

I don't really know what this line of posts was for, or how long it had been there, or anything about it. Our hosts might have known, but I didn't think to ask them.

If its function was to hold back land fall, it seemed to have been replaced by this cage of pebbles.  This kind of structure we've observed on a much grander scale filled with large grade aggregate holding up road building in quite precipitous places.  I've wondered if the metal will ever corrode, bringing down concrete, bypass and all, but decided it's not my problem.

They probably aren't all that old, but sea and weather had done their work and they seem quite ancient and mysterious, full of potential but ungraspable meaning, like a woodhenge or processional alignment,

Unknown walkers and pilgrims had left their mark on them, in the form of those ubiquitous balanced stone towers

solitary mini-menhirs,

and precisely chosen pebbles placed in and across the gaps between them.

They were studded and pierced and infibulated with metalwork,

tattooed by rust with shamanic faces, 

 and carved by the elements into landscapes within a landscape,

 Tom was very patient. Finally I made a pebble tower of my own and we walked on.

Even more pictures on a web album here.