I've had a page about the stones at Gavr'inis since I first started this site. It's a famous site and important for many reasons: I first became interested after reading about the imagery. I studied the literature and I felt I knew the place well. In the summer of 2000, I finally got there. It took a lot of planning and the holiday that was built around the trip took all of my available leave for the year. Was it worth it? Of course.

Eight hours on the ferry to Saint-Malo, including rescue helicopters looking for a man overboard and three head-counts was not an auspicious start. We took five days getting down to the Gulf of Morbihan, but once we were there, it lived up to all expectations. Gavr'inis was for me the central portion of the trip, so first we got our bearings by taking a boat trip round the islands hiring bicycles on the two largest ones. The boat passes close to the island and the drowned stone circle at Er Lannis. It's well worth doing this first, since none of the literature prepares you for the way the cairn dominates the landscape.

I was devastated to find that I'd botched the camera settings for the boat trip, but in truth there's a better shot from the shore at Locmariaquer. We went there afterwards, but again I'd recommend going there first, because it gives a better idea of the way the island and the cairn fit into the whole landscape.

To get to the island you have to book an inclusive boat trip. These run frequently throughout the day, and theoretically you can just turn up and go. I'd recommend, though, booking ahead. Numbers are limited and there wouldn't be a lot else to do if you had to wait for the next boat. We went on the first trip of the day, and appeared to get more time on the island than the later trips. Arriving at the island, first you get the tour of the outside. The commentary covers the history and dating, together with the water-level changes and sundry other information. Chunks of this are in English, but as always it helps a lot if you speak French - otherwise, buy the English guide and study it in advance. The overall impression is that the cairn is big. All the literature focuses on the stones in the chamber, but the cairn marks the place as important. You also wonder how it was possible to lose something that big - the cairn was only rediscovered in the nineteenth century.

Now the tour splits into two. One half stays outside while the others go into the chamber proper. We were towards the back of the first group in, and that seemed ideal. The guide pointed out the quartz stone in the ceiling, which would reflect the light of the rising sun bouncing off the water. He also told us that the carved stone in the floor (visible in the picture on the right) is a replica - it wears out quite quickly and the original is in a museum.

Then he described the markings on the stones themselves. He majored on the "Sky Goddess" theories. I'd arrived prepared to be sceptical about this, but seeing the real stones whilst listening to his commentary had me convinced that the various symbols indicate the sky goddes, the earth god and the combination of fertility and power. Certainly something was going on here, even if we don't really understand what.

You can't take photographs in the cairn. At first I was disappointed, but I know why: it would add to the damage to the stones as people jostled against them. In any case, as I discovered when photographing carved stones in chambers on the Locmariaquer peninsula, it's well-nigh impossible to do the things justice in a picture. The book has better pictures than I'd ever manage to take.

And visiting other cairns prolongs the pleasure. You only get about twenty minutes in the Gavr'inis chamber and it's difficult to imagine what it would have been like because of the other people. But you can go out to a number of chambered cairns on the peninsula and essentially have them to yourself. Deep inside one such, with no light, the look on my wife's face as the flash caught the carving on the stones was enough to convince me. If the imagery affects someone used to a world of the internet and television so strongly, then Gavr'inis must have been truly magic for its intended audience.