On my most recent trip to France I had a bit of spare time to indulge myself with some megalith hunting. After a visit to one of my favourite sites, the mysterious stones called Babouin and Babouine, I spotted a signpost for the enimatic sounding Dolmen de la Loge au Loup, or Dolmen of the Wolf Lodge. With a name like that, how could I resist? Within ten minutes I was parked up at the side of the road and heading down a muddy country lane.
I had no idea what I would find, but the Dolmen de la Loge au Loup certainly did not disappoint. More of a covered corridor than a classic dolmen, the monument is the remains of a prehistoric tomb thought to have been erected about 4500 years ago. Nowadays it is covered in moss, and trees have pushed their way up through the stones. The effect is wonderfully magical.
I am not sure how the stones got their name, and I certainly didn’t see any wolves on the day I visited. But staring past the gnarled trunks of the ancient oaks into the shadowy interior of the stones, the silence broken only by the rush of the wind through autumn leaves, it wasn’t hard to imagine how outlandish tales could develop about this strange, atmospheric site.