Returning Mont-Saint-Michel to the sea
We spent the weekend in the country with friends who look like Kristin Scott-Thomas and Julie Delpy. Every time we looked at them a Coldplay song played in our vestigial heart.
Sunday morning in miserable weather we went to Mont-Saint-Michel, a 40-minute drive on the autoroute. We were directed there by the GPS, which had a bland male voice and was given to mysterious detours (visiting his mistress, perhaps). We took to calling him Gertrud.
It turns out that a day of pouring rain and howling wind is the perfect occasion to visit Mont-Saint-Michel, as it is the only time the place is not covered in tourists.
Mont-Saint-Michel is an island fortress from the medieval period. It is less than a kilometer from the land, so during low tide pilgrims walk on the tidal flats from the coast. The danger from incoming tides and quicksand only makes it more thrilling.
We took the less exciting route, the new bridge. Due to siltation and other environmental changes wrought by progress, the island is barely an island anymore. Efforts are underway to give Mont-Saint-Michel back to the sea in a reverse-reclamation project.
Inside the walls are hotels and restaurants, including La Mere Poulard, where an omelet costs 49 euros. It must be fried in gold. We had the local specialty: mussels and fries and cider. There are bookstores, chapels, old Norman houses, and you can’t take a step without bumping into a souvenir stand.
And you have to climb. We’ve mentioned that Mont-Saint-Michel was the model for Minas Tirith in The Return of the King movie–where was Shadowfax when our quads were crying?
The views are spectacular, and since it was the first Sunday of the month, entrance to the Abbey was free. We decided to sit out the abbey tour to give our lungs a break and reconnoiter.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
November 15th, 2014 at 16:57
Thanks for this post, Jessica. Mont Saint Michel, for some reason, reminds me of the tv series The White Queen– it looks like the kind of setting for all that scheming and intermarriage between the Houses of York and Lancaster (although the series itself was shot in Belgium).
Your photos are lovely; my favorites are the ones with trees framed by a window and that stone archway with the sea in the background. And that slate-roofed cottage in the last photo, I wonder if that’s one of the houses where the 25 or so actual residents of the Mont (according to Wikipedia) stay.