Our Blog - Huelgoat, France

We did a nice walk in the Fôret de Huelgoat and then headed to the town of Huelgoat to look around. The name comes from the Breton words "uhel" which means "high", and "koat" (changed to goat), which means "forest". Therefore, it means “the wood from above”. It seems that there was a bit of mining done here ... silver-lead mines during the Bronze Age and Roman times. There was lead mining between 1834 and 1843 that was documented by several authors. It is another town with a dwindling population ... from 2400 people in mid 1940's down to just over 1400 now.

There is a little walk from the middle of town which goes through a granite boulder field that has a few interesting natural sites. The first stop on the walk was the Mill Blockfield. The granite from this area was used for quite some time, used in religious buildings from the 15th and 16th centuries, as well as other buildings, like this mill house. On the other side, you can still see the mill wheel.

The walk then went through this cave, called Devil's Cave. Legend says that someone was hiding in the cave, being chased by supporters of the King. As the cave was dark and cold, he lit a large fire while wearing a hat with 2 red features and holding a fork to defend himself. When they came into the cave to get him, they thought they could see the shadow of the devil behind the fire. To get to the bottom, you have to climb down a couple ladders.

Here you can see a set of boulders in a grouping called the Virgin's Household. The stones, eroded by run-off water, ended up in a few strange shapes. While I wasn't able to see all of them, the sign mentions that some of the rocks look like a pot, a ladle, a butter churn, and a set of fireplace bellows.

This last one is called the Trembling Rock. It is a huge boulder and is the "star attraction" here. It weight 137 tons and it sits on a narrow 90 centimeter ridge. If you position yourself properly and push, the rock will actually oscillate. You can see a couple kids attempting to get it to move (without luck, I can add).

The town itself is fairly small but has a nice lake in the middle of it.