Sunday, 22 June 2025

île de saint cado (12. 549)

Walking the opposite direction along the shore front Moulin des Oies from the campground, we first came to the dolmen known as Boccénic Vras (the geese-mill) on an outcropping, one of a few remaining prehistoric megalithic structures which were formerly as numerous as the preserved Carnac Stones not far from here but many of the granite monuments were used for construction material for lighthouses and churches, continuing through the habour and to the island of Welsh holy man Cardoc (Enez Kado), whose remote hermitage became a monastery during the high Middle Ages.

The rather remarkably engineered dike bridge connecting it to the mainland predates that period and was, according to legend, built by the devil in the course of one night. For his troubles, Satan claimed the first soul to cross—for which the saint volunteered but threw a black car onto the bridge at the last minute. About a hundred architectural marvels in France have the same demonic attribution.
Credited with the founding of many churches and abbeys throughout Breton, Cornwall and Scotland, Cado / Cardoc is fêted on 21 September (bay-dee-ya) and his Norman-era vita is considered one document that independently corroborates the historicity of the figure of King Arthur—prayed to for intervention for glandular issues and deafness. The church and supporting village was chiefly a fishing community and the monumental cavalry dates from 1832 and the very photogenic Maison de Nichtarguér, an 1894 construction built for the caretaker of an oyster farm.