Val sans retour

The Val sans retour (Vale of No Return or Valley Without Return), also known as the Val des faux amants (Vale of False Lovers) or the Val périlleux (Perilous Vale), is a mythical site from Arthurian legend, as well as a physical site located in central Brittany, in the Paimpont forest. The legend attached to it is primarily recounted in the Lancelot Grail: in it, Morgan le Fay experiences a disappointment in love with the knight Guiomar, and, in retaliation, creates the Val sans retour in the forest of Brocéliande, where any knights unfaithful in love are imprisoned. The physical site in the Paimpont Forest became a popular tourist site due to its links to Arthurian legends. It has different points of interest including the Golden Tree and the Fairy Mirror in its valley, as well as Viviane’s house and Merlin’s seat on its ridges. It is home to numerous species of flora and fauna and protected as a natural zone of ecological interest, fauna and flora, as well as a Natura 2000 site.

In Arthurian legend, the Val sans retour is an enchanted place created by King Arthur's fairy sister Morgan to imprison knights who are unfaithful to their ladies. It appears most prominently in the Lancelot Grail cycle, although it is foreshadowed in Chrétien de Troyes' Erec and Enide.

In the Lancelot Grail, a compilation of Arthurian texts from the thirteenth century, the Val sans retour is created by Morgan after a brief love affair with the knight Guiomar (also known as Guyamor, Guyomard, and other variants). Guiomar is convinced by his aunt, Queen Guinevere, to end the affair, provoking a deep hatred from Morgan towards the queen and the Knights of the Round Table. This prompts Morgan to leave Arthur’s court and seek out Merlin to learn magic. With her new knowledge of magic, Morgan creates the Val sans retour in the enchanted forest of Brocéliande. She casts a spell that traps any unfaithful lovers (whom she calls "false lovers") in the Val forever. Morgan specifically creates the Val for Guiomar: upon surprising him in the embrace of another woman, she condemns him to never leave the Val again. This imprisonment is extended to any knight who enters after him who has been unfaithful, in thought or in deed, to his lover. The trial is attempted by many knights. No one manages to break the enchantment and these men roam the Val, forever lost to the outside world. They remain free to see each other, to talk to each other, to play or to dance because Morgan provides for all their needs. A parallel can be drawn with the Wife of Bath, who ultimately describes in the Canterbury Tales a female dominated Arthurian kingdom, where the roles are reversed. According to the analysis of Carolyne Larrington, the Val, as Morgan's own creation, also reflects an important part of the personality of the fairy, in a sense a preemptive form of feminism. Through her power, stemming from her knowledge of magic, she is able through legend to reverse a situation that women would not, in reality, have had the ability to change. As Morgan’s most spectacular and provocative magical display, the creation of the Val sans retour interferes in the lives of hundreds of Arthurian knights. It also illustrates the tension present in the relationship between men and women within the society of the time: in literary works, the knight is nothing without the love of a woman, often reduced to the role of an object. However, the expectations of a woman of the time went beyond the simple fact of seeing her husband “dedicate his chivalrous exploits to her”.

The Val sans retour is a deep valley located in the Paimpont forest. The entrance to the Val is near the town of Tréhorenteuc, in Morbihan, and the site is inseparable from this village. However, the Val sans retour is officially a part of the territory of the municipality of Paimpont, department of Ille et Vilaine. The valley is a natural extension of the Paimpont forest massif. It is surrounded by ridges, cut through with purple schist, a type of rock typical of the region. The valley as a whole retains the scars of the various fires that affected it throughout the twentieth century, favoured by the prevalence of conifers in the area. The vegetation consists of oaks and pines, with an alternation of rocky moors and wooded areas. The site is also home to a wide variety of birds, primarily passerines. The Val sans retour is subject to several ecological protections due to the variety and fragility of its flora and fauna. It is covered twice as a “Zone naturelle d'intérêt écologique, faunistique et floristique”: once for the stream area, and a second time by the forest of Paimpont. It is also a Natura 2000 site.

The Val sans retour was the first place to claim a link with the sites of Arthurian legend. It was not predisposed to become a popular tourist site due to its position far from any main roads and the town of Paimpont. For the majority of its history, the Val sans retour served as a location for both metallurgical and agricultural activity. Specifically, it was used as a pasture for domestic animals and as a supply of animal bedding.

During the Celtic Revival of the 19th century, claims of Aurthurian sites in Brittany began to gain traction. In his 1811 poem La table ronde (The Round Table), Auguste Creuzé de Lesser situated the Brocéliande forest in Brittany, near Quintin. Ludovic Chapplain, a founding member of the Lycée Armoricain, argued for the location of the legendary Val in Brittany in the 1823 article À Monsieur l’éditeur du Lycée Armoricain (To the editor of the Lycée Armoricain). In 1812, amateur archaeologist Jean Côme Damien Poignant and poetry enthusiast François Gabriel Ursin Blanchard de la Musse associated the exploits recounted by this poem, La table ronde, with the Marette Valley, located to the east of the Paimpont forest massif. Notably, they placed the "pavilion" of the fairy Morgan that the Lancelot Graal located in the Valley of No Return in the Château de Comper. By 1850, the location of the Val sans retour had been moved slightly to the west due to the establishment of a metallurgy building from the Paimpont forges, which distorted the legendary character of the Marette valley by contradicting the image of unspoiled nature. The importance of the landscape became paramount in the selection of a substitute location: the Rauco valley, near Tréhorenteuc, where it remains to this day. Félix Bellamy definitively confirmed this new location in the 1890s.

Appointed rector of Tréhorenteuc in 1942, Father Henri Gillard recognised the potential for the Christianisation of Arthurian legends to re invigorate local faith. He personally funded a 12 year restoration of the church of Saint Onenne, In 1972, the mayor of Paimpont created the "Tourist Office of Brocéliande", with the  stated goal of managing tourism in the Paimpont Forest (including the Val sans retour). Several sites of touristic interest are located within the Val:

Le Miroir aux fées (The Fairies' Mirror) is a lake located at the entrance to the Val that was previously the source for a water mill. It is associated with a local legend that claims it was inhabited by seven fairy sisters, who can purportedly be seen by looking into the lake.