Mont St Michel

Thursday 11 August

It seems the local church bells are stuck back 100 years ago when they were the only source to wake people for work. Both yesterday and today they announced with at least 60 rings that it was definitely time for everyone to be up at 7am.

An overcast day but didn't look threatening as we drove an exhausting 10km to the camp site we had been aiming for last night, Mont Saint Michel Camping (how could we have got it wrong?!), settled in then headed off for the 2km walk to explore the Mont along with a billion other tourists.

In other European countries they are called Stellplatz, in France they are called Aire and are municipally run camp sites for caravans and motor homes where you pay a minimal fee for electricity, maybe toilet/shower facilities, and the possibility to top up fresh water and dump grey water and chemical toilet waste. They are absolutely everywhere in France and very cheap for an overnight stop.

As we walked up the road to the Mont, we came upon the Aire which is basically at its base. You pay 12 Euro to park there and can stay overnight if you wish. Imagine the view at night and first thing in the morning on a fine day.

The history of the Mont is thought to date back to 708 when the Bishop of Avranches had a sanctuary built on Mont Tombe in honour of Archangel Michel it is said he saw in a vision 3 times. A pilgrimage sight, the Benedictine monks settled in the abbey while a town grew below it. In the 14^th century it became a fortress and resisted all attacks from the British in the 100 Years War and became a symbol of national identify. The monks left during the Revolution and until 1863 the abbey was a prison. 

Classified as a historical monument since 1864 it has undergone many restorations and is now classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Only around 40 people actually live in the Mont these days. These are probably the Gendarmes (police), Pompiers (fire fighters) and security personnel.

Opening time is 9:30am and we got there at around an hour later but already the crowds were thick. We headed straight for the abbey, queued for a short while and got audio guides to visit immediately rather then wait for the 2pm English tour. You are taken through the abbey itself, the monk's dining hall, the honoured guests dining hall, the cloisters, and bowels of the abbey containing enormous support pillars, the monk's cemetery (non existent now really), the funeral chapel, the Knight's Hall and the almonry where the monks received the poor (this is now the gift shop). Hopefully our photos can do it justice because words cannot. It was a long time dream of ours to visit this place and we are so lucky to have had the pleasure. The weather held out for us again too which is a blessing.

After a delicious lunch in one of the cafes, we thought we'd walk around the outside while the tide was still out (due in at 5pm today), resulting in our shoes being caked in sludge and almost slipping over several times. Never mind, we got some good photos and the sludge just came off once dry. This area has some of the fastest and largest tides in the world – like 12 metres - so you have to be careful in the bay.

Over many years a lot has been done to hold back the tide and build up dry land to allow access to the site for tourists, so much so that problems have occurred with too much silt forming or too much grass coming up to the Mont. Now they are trying to rectify this by building a new dam to control the release of silt (already constructed) and a new bridge and carpark due for completion in 2012.

At night we went back to the new dam site and took some great photos of the Mont illuminated and thanked the universe for giving us the opportunity to see such splendor.

More photos here.