Footprints on Alluvial Plains

The same image of Mont Saint Michel on the front cover of my guide book in France, this is like a floating village with an Abbaye at the tip.

This post is rather belated since we went for a short vacation (after a long vacation) during the Ascension long weekend. After Tour La France, we thought we could have another small roadtrip to St. Malo, with Mont Saint Michel as a highlight. This is about 4 hours drive from GIF, and so, we stayed 1 night at Angers, which is on the way and 2 nights at St. Malo.

Our 1st stop was at the Cathedrale of Chartres. This is another UNESCO monument of Gothic architecture.  My bad for going to the Cathedrale on Ascension Day, bad bad choice...this is a religious holiday, and the Cathedrale is practically closed for anything touristy. We could neither enter the crypt or get the audios, the labyrinth was also blocked by chairs placed for people attending the service. Maybe, we are just not fated to walk the labyrinth.

Nonetheless, this highly religious monument has already invoked lots of curious cells in me to find out about the rose windows, what the labyrinth contain and what lies underneath this majestic and sacred structure. And so we made another bad choice to buy a guide book on the Cathedrale, which we could not understand nuts! The English is so badly translated from French, that we might be better off getting a French version instead.

We ended the 1st day at Angers, and spent half a day in Chateau d'Angers. This is a very lasting structure of wood, which was reinforced by stones in the later years. The Apocalypse Tapestries are also housed in the building.

The cones are removed for the use of canons

This set of tapestries measures 100m long and 4.5m high, illustrates the biblical text between the good and evil, with Saint John as the "narrator".

Princess Daisy: Here comes Mario again!

It was a stressful day arriving at St. Malo, since our schedule has to be governed by the tides. Seriously, the most important thing to carry around here is not the map, but the tide table. Everyone seems to be here, and the nearest parking spaces nearest the old town were all snapped up by 2pm. After 1 hr of frantic search before the tide comes up, we settled with a space at the passenger terminal, which is a little distance away.

I had initially planned to visit Grand Be and Fort National on the same day, while the tide is still low. However, I realised that Grand Be is situated at a spot where the tide rises faster. So if we really want to go, we can only do that +/- 1.5 hrs of the LOWEST tide. On the other hand, Fort National is much more flexible with a wider window to walk over the beach.

Fort National, accessible by foot during low tide only. Guided tour in French only, with an English leaflet.

This fort held an important role in defending the city during the war. Besides Fort Nationale, there are also a few more offshore forts serving the same purpose.

St. Malo city, view from Fort National.

Something we tell each other regularly....

Grand Be with it's access submerged.

This wall is not friendly with short people. If not, the walk by the ramparts would be perfect!

We got some Bordier butter from here, I'll never spread my bread with any other butter again...

These butter are all handmade in Bretagne, and is a speciality of the region. Various flavours too...we tried doux (unsalted) and sel fumé (salted, smoked). The latter was brilliant for making mash potatoes, and I heard that it is great for grilled fish too. 

We happened to catch some action from the art forum too...great music and fun!

I think the Student was more startled then they are when he took this picture.

We hopped over to the neighbouring town, Dinard on our 2nd evening in St Malo. The route from St Malo to Dinard is subjected to frequent jams, and is not for one with a tight schedule. The jams are almost certain, as the boats and the cars share the same path. When the boats need to exit into the sea, the road will be raised to let the boats pass. Everytime this happens, it will take at least 15 mins...so, just pull up the handbrake, enjoy the breeze, check FB and blog. Here, we stopped by the barrage and loaded some information on their electricity source.

In Dinard, take a walk along the coast...there are luxurious mansions lining the coast, most belonging to rich Englishmen who were once shipowners here.

A statue of Alfred Hitchcock in Dinard.

This is the restaurant that I missed having dinner at....we reached the restaurant too late without any reservations. In St. Malo, forget all other things, except seafood and galette.

Mont Saint Michel is about an hour drive away from St Malo. A UNESCO site, and a major focus of pilgrimage (we are really making sure our roadtrip is in-line with the religious holiday). In the 10th century, the Benedictines settled in the abbey on the mont, with a village below. This image is what the people in the middle ages regards as paradise, a representation of the heavenly Jerusalem on earth.

The mont is connected to the mainland via a tarmac causeway now, historically via a tidal causeway. On google maps, the mont looks like a floating village on the alluvial plains. The carpark used to be just below the mont, but it was very venerable to the tides. They have since constructed another carpark at the mainland, and provide shuttle buses across the causeway to access the mont.

Legend has it that the archangel Saint Michel, who defeated a dragon (symbol of the devil) instructed Saint Aubert, the bishop of Avranches to construct a church on Mont Tombe, which is Mont Saint Michel of today.

A statue of the archangel slaying a dragon in the church.

It was low tide in the morning, and saw streams of "ant like" people walking on the alluvial plains. We were just not equipped and dressed to join the crowd...slippers, bermudas and raincoat needed. There is quicksand in the area, so it is advisable to follow the crowd and not wander on your own.

Those specks are people, not dirt on the lens. These guys actually walked all the way to the coast at the end side, past that rock you see. To do that, I suppose we have to spend the entire day here.

The Abbaye on the tip of the mont.

The grass land here is apparently very good for sheep grazing. So try the lamb on the menu here.

These monks and nuns live, pray and work here in the Abbaye, prayer starting soon, so this is our last shot here.

The Cloister of the abbaye. Admire the architecture and art sculpture on the pillars here, I notice that there is not a single repetition in the design.

Capturing a shot that we can't get on our own.