Pre historic Life.

Four kilometres away are the standing stones of Monteneuf. These megaliths (standing stones) are awesome, and have caught the imagination of hundreds and hundreds of people who travel huge distances to see them each year. Because of these stones and the curiosity we have for Neolithic life, the Centre les Landes was set up to provide information about this era, the legends and the mystery which surrounds life at this time. In addition, the Centre les Landes also runs courses on the environment, working with nature, the eco systems, sculpture and ecologically sound farming methods.

This week they are running a course ‘Pre Historic Life’. Centre les Landes run courses such as this, totally free of charge, throughout the year and as I have always been mildly interested in early civilisation, so I enrolled myself on the course for three days. Today was the first day. I arrived at 10.00 am and was given a goats skin to sit on. We sat ( of course !) cross legged on our animal skins in a circle and watched a demonstration on how early pots and pottery ‘mugs’ were made. We were then given a handful of clay ….

This afternoon, jewellery making. We were soon crafting pieces of slate just as they would have done thousands of years ago only using another stone and water to mould our ‘jewels’.

Tomorrow we are constructing a fire to ‘cook’ our pottery pots and we are making galettes (savoury pancakes) in the afternoon.