Greetings from Cherbourg. Earlier we visited Nice and Cannes in the Mediterranean, and now we’re exploring France’s Atlantic coast, and we started with the iconic Mont Saint Michel. Tomorrow we’ll visit Normandy, and on Thursday it’s Versailles. Pretty exciting.
Mont Saint Michel is what’s known as a tidal island, meaning that it’s only an island during high tide. When the tide is out it’s part of the mainland. As a practical matter, that used to mean that you had to time your arrival and departure so you didn’t get stuck on either side waiting for the tide to change. Since 2000 a new bridge is high enough that the sea level is no longer an issue.
One more paragraph of factoids before I get into our tour. The island’s size is seventeen acres, and it’s home to approximately 20 people, mostly the Brothers and Sisters of Jerusalem from the abbey up on the peak. Three million people visit each year, and obviously the economy of the island and surrounding area is primarily based on tourism. In addition to the abbey, Mont Saint Michel has also served as a military garrison and even a prison at various times over the past thousand years. Okay, let’s move on to our tour.
Our bus departed from the pier promptly at 8:30 am for the two and a half hour drive from Cherbourg. The temperature was in the low 60s, with overcast skies and light sprinkles, quite a change from the hot, sunny weather we were used to in the Mediterranean. I dozed quite a bit of the way, but was awake enough to see that we were passing through farm country, with fields separated by hedgerows rather than fences. The hedgerows in Normandy date back to the time of the Vikings, and proved to be a challenge for allied troops after the D-Day invasion.
I have to say at this point that the tour was a bit of a disappointment. Upon our arrival near Mont Saint Michel we were treated to a leisurely three course lunch with wine at a local restaurant before going on to the site, significantly reducing our time for the actual visit. A box lunch on the bus would have been a much better choice. Additionally, given the expected crowds, narrow passageways, and amount of climbing involved, our tour should have been limited to no more than 20 people. Our overly large group of 47 was constantly getting strung out, forcing the guide to wait over and over again for us to regroup, further reducing our time to view the abbey. It probably didn’t help that some in our group should have probably chosen a different tour than one listed as “strenuous,” in the tour description, but that’s a subject for another day.
Still, I got to see Mont Saint Michel, and that was the goal. And fortunately, I have a written guide and site map that will tell me what I saw on our rushed tour.
Tomorrow we’re touring Normandy, including Omaha Beach and an American cemetery. I’m looking forward to it, and hopefully it will be better organized and executed. I’ll be back with a full report, so stay tuned.
First look, from the bus window.
But first a lovely three course meal with wines at this nearby restaurant.
The main course. Chicken with carrots and mashed potatoes. Everything was delicious.
Approaching on the bridge. As you can see, it was low tide.
Almost at the entrance. There are a few old cannons pointing towards the mainland.
At the entrance. These are the crowds you will face if you visit on a nice summer day.
Climbing toward the abbey. We were told monks are buried in this small cemetery.
There’s much more to Mont Saint Michel than the abbey at the top. Looking down before we reached the abbey.
The view looking up as we climbed was pretty good too.
Looking up as we reached the abbey.
Rear of the abbey church. Romanesque architecture in the rear.
The front of the abbey church is gothic, rebuilt in that style after a fire in 1421.
As a pilgrimage site, the abbey is deliberately sparsely decorated, with very few statues and shrines. This is one of the few.
There are two or three other large chambers, used for meetings, for copying the Bible, dining, etc.
Another of the large chambers.
This is the cloister, all the way up on the abbey’s upper level.
The Wheel Room. This massive mechanism was used to lift everything from food to building materials up to the abbey from down below.
View from pretty high up. The 2000 bridge has eliminated the need to time your entrance and exit to cross at low tide.
Different view of the spire on the way back down.
It is permitted to go out into the bay during low tide but it is strongly recommended to go with an experienced guide. There is a lot of quicksand, and when the tide rises it comes in at the speed of a running horse. Best to be out there with someone who knows what they’re doing.
Shot from the bus window on the way back to Cherbourg. Normandy is farm country.
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