Forêt de Brocéliande (forêt de Paimpont)

Paimpont

One says ‘Brocéliande’ and thinks of Merlin, Viviane and the knights of the Round Table. Yet the name, which comes from the medieval romances, was attached to the forest of Paimpont only very late. According to the article of the Société d'histoire et d'archéologie de Bretagne, it was around 1820 that the justice of the peace of Montfort, Poignand, designated a covered alley as Merlin's tomb; in 1839 the baron du Taya wrote that ‘le Brécilien moderne, c'est la forêt de Painpont’; in 1896 Félix Bellamy fixed the map of the places of legend. The railway, in 1857, then the guidebooks did the rest. The real history is that of a working forest: a regulation of 1467 governs grazing and the sale of timber; in 1653 it was bought with the right to build forges there, which went out in 1884; in 1783 a survey found that the high forest had almost disappeared. Today it covers about 9,000 hectares, mostly private. A fire burned 450 ha there in September 1990, and another nearly 400 ha in August 2022. One walks there among oaks, beeches, ferns and ponds, with its legends as much as its history on the ground.

Getting there: Forest largely private (about 10% state-owned, in the north-east, managed by the ONF). The owners tolerate hiking on waymarked paths; some paths are closed during the hunting season. Routes free of charge and open; the ‘Porte des Secrets’ at Paimpont is paying. Coordinates: ‘Forêt de Brocéliande’ point in OpenStreetMap (near Paimpont), since the forest has no precise centre; the sites of the legend (Barenton, Val sans Retour…) already have their own entries.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound