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2017 E5 walk, day 11: Coat Mocun to Huelgoat

Section 3, Day 11
Coat Mocun
3°48′0.2″W
48°21′53.0″N
Huelgoat
3°43′19.3″W
48°21′47.4″N
low 35 °F
high 59 °F
33,185 steps
14.2 miles

The crow’s flight — or even the car’s route — to Huelgoat would have been brief and probably uninteresting, but the trail wound around and approached the town from the north, through some pleasant farmland.

A still stream or perhaps a very small pond is crossed by a narrow series of approximately rectangular stone slabs. The gaps between them are narrow enough that crossing would still be comfortable. Plants grow in the water. Beyond, the muddy trail continues to the east, wide enough for a car.
Crossing the Rivière le Fao. I’m pretty sure the middle stone is actually a gravestone.

The northerly route was quite scenic — the area has an abundance of huge stones, usually just lying tumbled and immovable, but sometimes erected as menhirs.

In the middle of a lawn stands a smooth, rounded menhir, more than 15′ tall. Behind, to the south-southwest, are trees, their new leaves pale green.
This perfect specimen is the Menhir de Kerampeulven, just standing in somebody’s side yard.

The walk into town went through a well-signed forest with trails for casual hikers, looking at sights like an old hill-fort and massive rocks in various formations. Approaching town, I stopped at the touristy (but still enjoyable) Crêperie de la Roche Tremblante (“Crêperie of the Quivering Rock”, named for a nearby stone that looks precariously-balanced) for a late lunch.

Huelgoat itself was cute. I stopped at a grocery store for supplies, and Ti Forn (a bakery) for the standard bread and pastries.

A large lake, mirror-smooth, drains into a bowl-shaped depression in the foreground, obviously human-made. A few buildings are visibile around the shores of the lake to the west; clouds are in the sky above, and reflected in the lake surface.
The Lac d’Huelgoat drains here to — I’m not making this up — the chaos mill. (“I think this area has a pretty good DM”, quipped a friend.)

Having resupplied for the next several days, I headed east out of town to a campground called La Rivière d’Argent (“the Silver River”), my destination for the evening.

A rugged forest floor is covered by dead leaves and other debris; a mostly-bare tree is in the foreground. Near that tree is what appears to be a pile of rounded boulders disappearing into the ground; between them, instead of dirt or leaves, is just darkness.
The stream is not visible, but you can hear it running under these rocks.
A large boulder thrusts out of a slope. Atop the boulder grows a large tree, its roots burrowing into the slope and gripping the top of the boulder; its top is not visible. A beaten-dirt trail continues south, along the base of the slope.
Just your average tree on a boulder.

I pitched my tent near the campground’s office in the vain hope of getting a bit of wifi signal, and slept decently (though the night was cold).

Map of the day’s route.