Languidic Around Dézinio

Comprising some forty hectares of public and private plots, the Dézinio wood is only about thirty years old. Around 1950, there were only parcels of land surrounded by embankments, some planted with apple trees and cultivated, others in meadows. One of these, known as “flouren fetan”, attests to the presence of very wet meadows and a spring with a fountain, was used by the townland around 1960 to supply the inhabitants of Languidic with drinking water.  Following land consolidation in 1967 and the development of intensive farming, the catchment was threatened with closure due to pollution. In 1986, a prefectural decree declared the establishment of a protective perimeter around the Dézinio catchment to be in the public interest. At the suggestion of the Loca-Terre environmental association, the town bought the land around the catchment in the 1990s to create a woodland with oak, red oak, beech and other species. Its tree-lined paths are ideal for walks. The public woods are now jointly managed by Lorient Agglomération, as part of its water authority, and the Office National des Forêts. Between 2022 and 2025, a major project was undertaken to remove the black tarpaulins used during planting, in order to limit plastic pollution in the protected area. On your right, the stones found lying in several places in the wood are probably part of ancient megalithic alignments.

Dividing the wood into two parts, this 30-meter-wide corridor is regularly cleared by the Réseau de Transport Electrique. Preventing the regrowth of trees under the high-voltage line, it promotes heathland species such as fern and broom. Passing through Languidic, this line provides power between Baud and Poteau Rouge in Caudan. This strategic site manages production and demand for electrical installations in Morbihan and South Finistère, ensuring that every household has a constant supply. Having regenerated naturally, the wood you'll be walking through is a mixture of local species and fir trees, with holly and brambles growing underneath. 

Inhabited since Neolithic times, Languidic still has numerous remains of covered walkways, dolmens and menhirs, mainly in the surrounding villages of Kerzhéro, Kerdanué and Kerdoret. The best-known, the Kersolan alignments, are located to the south-east of the town of Languidic, a few kilometres away as the crow flies. In fact, it's quite possible that the ruins in this area are an extension of it. All are close to the ancient road from Locmariaquer to Castennec. Experts speculate that this axis, or one of its variants, passed through Kersolan and Lann-Menhir. Many of these monuments have been destroyed, particularly during the land consolidation programme started in 1967.  The stones, such as those you saw in the woods, have been scattered, buried and moved. The locality, whose first houses you can see, is called Lann Menhir, the moor of the long stones. Two megalithic sites are shown on the Napoleonic land registry of 1835. The first, known as “la pierre longue”, was at the other end of the hamlet, towards Pont-Augan. The second, near Rest er Moël, also known as Menhir, was associated with two roadside buildings. Increased construction along the Nationale 24 road extended the hamlet for almost 800 meters in the direction of Languidic. In another era, when the Americans arrived in 1944, an encampment was set up on this high ground, now cleared, but formerly hidden from view in the woods.

At road level here, ran one of the Morbihan railroad tracks, financed from the end of the 19th century 80% by the département, the rest by the townlands. The “potato train” (as it was known) ran for 307 km and transported everything: passengers, baggage, postal packages, animals, cereals and other agricultural produce, building materials. Connecting Hennebont to Baud over a distance of 22 kilometres on this stretch, it operated between 1923 and 1942. Rapidly competing with motor vehicle traffic on the nearby Nationale 24, its freight traffic was the lowest in the department. In 1934, only 388 passengers boarded from the village, compared with 9,358 from Plouay station in the same year. There were two other stops on this route at Kerblayo before Hennebont and at Saint-Nicolas. The Saint-Nicolas stop was in fact located 400 meters from here in Lann Menhir at the café Le Belleguic. A simple sign at the side of the road explained the procedure: “SAINT NICOLAS Passengers wishing to board the train should stand by this post and signal the engineer to stop.” Recovered from a junk shop, it was replanted near the Saint-Nicolas chapel. Partly dismantled by the Germans, who converted the rails for building the reinforced concrete of the Keroman base in Lorient, the route, still clearly visible on aerial photos from the 1950s, was destroyed during land consolidation around 1970. Portions of the tracks had already been privatized and sold to the owners of adjoining land.

The plans for the Languidic land reforms were finalized in 1967 by the surveyor from the Morbihan Rural Engineering Department. It served as the basis for a project to merge plots of land together and create farm roads to facilitate machine access to the fields. It did not go smoothly, dispossessing some farmers of family land they had owned.  Here, like elsewhere, land reforms contributed to the destruction of embankments and natural and historical heritage. At Lann Menhir, stones and trees were piled up in vast heaps measuring several dozen m2 in the middle of large fields. They only disappeared at the end of the 20th century. The “yellow path” you're walking along was also created and laid out on a straight line, just like the fields. Gone were fields with Breton names like “er gachen” or “er gouhenne”. The bocage with its wooded slopes is still present. On the way down, you will cross a stream that starts in the wetland on your right. Joining the Bagué stream, it feeds the Pont du Roc'h river and forms part of the Ria d'Etel watershed.

You're approaching the village of Saint-Nicolas, whose roads meet at its chapel. In 1835, on the Napoleonic land registry, this large hamlet comprised around ten farms, or some thirty longères and small dwellings organized around courtyards. The village also boasts a bread oven and three barn ovens, two of which can still be seen near the chapel, recognisable by the protruding arches on their gable walls.  Although the stone dwellings have been converted, many still feature cross-moulded windows in the corners, and elaborate segmental arch doors and 16th century ogees decorated with a flower. These buildings stand alongside houses with straight or arched doors from the 17th and 18th centuries and houses from the 19th and 20th centuries.

On your left, Saint-Nicolas fountain is reached by small stone steps. Dating from the 17th century, it is distinctive for its triangular wall, obviously once topped by a cross, its rectangular basin and its niche designed to house the saint's statue. Both religious and domestic, it is extended by a monolithic stone with a shallow circular basin, once used to clean the bottom of the bucket to avoid contaminating the spring water. The fountain was part of the village washhouse, part of which is still visible. Until the 1970s, it was traditional to empty and clean it before the pardon ceremony. In Brittany, this ritual is also associated with purification.

Converted in the 18th century, Saint-Nicolas chapel was built in the 16th century, as can be seen by its decorative elements. Its ogee and segmental arch doors are topped by pilasters and decorative accolades, while its buttresses, bell tower and cross-braced railings are particularly well-preserved. On either side of the south doorway are two Iron Age funerary stelae, one of which has been re-cut. They were used in the 6th and 5th centuries BC to mark Gallic cremation cemeteries and moved here. You can also admire the famous stop sign for the little train. The building houses two 16th century statues, listed as historical monuments: a polychrome wooden Saint Laurent holding the symbol of his martyrdom, a grill, and a polychrome white limestone Saint Armel, dressed in an alb, with a dragon at his feet. Saint Nicolas, also listed as a Historic Monument and depicted as a bishop with mitre and crosier, dates, like the remodelling, from the 18th century. A Notre Dame de Crénénan statue, linked to the building of the same name in Ploërdut, and to the once-popular pardon near Guémené-sur-Scorff, completes this ensemble. The traditional mid-August pardon, now celebrated in June, brought together the local faithful from some fifteen surrounding villages. The building was cleaned and decorated with flowers from gardens. The chapel was renovated between 1981 and 1987 by the Comité de Sauvegarde de la Chapelle, which organised a festival to finance the work over several years. The pardon ceremony continues with a mass and social events. Turn around and retrace your steps.

The vast area on your left, known as Lann Vras, the great moor, runs all the way down to Saint-Nicolas. From moorland in the 1950s to woodland in the 1980s, it is now farmed. It has also been classified as an “area of presumed archaeological prescription” in connection with Iron Age occupation from the 6th century BC. The funerary stelae in front of the chapel, are sign of a cemetery where cremated bones were buried in the ground in urns or small chests, and were clearly linked to this nearby Gallic settlement. Languidic also boasts a remarkable concentration of Iron Age stelae. Archaeologist Daniel Tanguy counted 45 in Languidic in 1995, including a third in Saint-Nicolas, 100 metres south of the chapel. These steles were the object of religious beliefs. It was said that the carved stele of Saint-Nicolas preserved a trace of the chains that had been used to attach the devil to it. It was also known as the “stone of the hanged”. Like the megalithic monuments, the steles confirm the existence of ancient human occupation in Languidic.

The Dézinio water tower, comprising two low circular tanks, are used to store water pumped and treated at the catchment. Rising to a height of 108 meters, it enables the natural descent of water to homes by gravitation. Lower than large mushroom-shaped water towers, it is connected a pressure station at Lann Menhir to ensure that all users have access to drinking water. All these systems require daily monitoring and human and technical intervention, which we never think about when we turn on a tap.

As early as 1835, the large hamlet of Dézinio was made up of three groups of houses linked by roads. The one you are passing through to the southwest offers a glimpse of the architectural quality of the farms built and converted between the 17th and 20th centuries. Like in Saint-Nicolas, the hamlet had four barn ovens, such as the one on your left. Over the years, the segmental arch doors, one of which is decorated with the same floral motif as in Saint-Nicolas, have been reused in buildings dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. The presence of several ternary houses from the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, can be identified by their three bays and floors, indicates the presence of a wealthy peasant bourgeoisie. Lit by large windows, with kitchen and living room on the ground floor, bedrooms with fireplaces upstairs and an attic, they provided comfortable living for their owners, known locally as “pitaod”. As you go back to the road, you'll also be able to see the fountain and washhouse in the village centre, in the wetland area, which once provided water for daily use.

Accessible via the old road linking Dézinio to Lann Menhir, in the “Flouren fetan” wetland, the Dézinio catchment has been pumping water from this spring via a well since the early 1960s to supply water to some of the local inhabitants. In 1984, it was combined with a well drawing from the groundwater. The town used it for consumption after simple iron and manganese neutralization treatment, followed by disinfection. It was plugged and replaced by a new well in 2002, then two in 2005 with a simple physical & chemical treatment process. With a production capacity of 50 m3/hour, it produced up to 200,000 m3 in 2010. It is still active, and since 2023 it has been one of the Department's eight priority catchments within the framework of the SDAGE Loire-Bretagne (master plan for water development and management) 2022-2027. In addition to its immediate and nearby protection perimeter, it benefits from a remote protection perimeter including the hamlet of Dézinio, woods and fields, with the aim of improving water quality for nitrates and phytosanitary products. As you walk around the catchment area, you will see a cement washhouse built in the 1960s on your left, close to the stream that flows from the Dézinio meadows into the Blavet near Pont-Augan. The water flows into a first, small basin used to rinse linen in clean water, then into the washing basin, equipped on either side with three washing stations with an inclined surface for scrubbing and beating the linen.

After the town purchased part of the land surrounding the water catchment area, the Loca-Terre association, which works to protect natural environments, conserve and restore heritage and promote environmental education, was entrusted with the management of this parcel of land. It's a place where these objectives are demonstrated and promoted, with a planted embankment, a hedgerow and an apple orchard. In 1997 and the following years, they created an arboretum thanks to the French scheme “One birth One tree” which sponsors a tree for each child born in the year in the town. Personalities such as the former mayor of Languidic, Maurice Olliéro, Jean-Claude Pierre, founder of Eau & Rivières de Bretagne, Alain Bougrain-Dubourg, Yves Duteil and Irène Frain, all sponsored the event. They each have their own tree here. Several varieties are planted: pedunculate oak, swamp or American oak, birch, cherry, hornbeam, yew and walnut. This represents a real benefit for the environment and for future generations, and encourages children and their families to become attached to the site.