Saturday 20th – Week 1 – Mont Saint Michel, Dinan Sightseeing

Since we last caught up, the bottom seems to have dropped out of the camping market and we have plummeted in net worth from a 4-star campground in Dinan to a 2-star in Chinon (Loire). The tent, air bed and sleeping bag are the same, but the shower cubicle is now more like what I remember from 15 years ago and I have to shave in the open, in view of the entire world. Note to self - “seek out 4 star campgrounds in future”. This campground also doesn't have wifi, so I haven't been able to update the blog for a few days. On the plus side, the tent site is shaded, level and after one night appears free of the heavy dews that we had suffered in Brittany. That is the major plus in moving from Brittany to the Loire – coming inland, the temperature is a couple of degrees warmer and the wind even more so. We ate dinner outside last night and were hot for the first time since Paris, so that is a great improvement.

So back to Mont Saint Michel. It's about an hours drive from Dinan, so we were up early. We're always up early. Tenters rise and fall with the sun, and as nobody else tents, we always have free range of the shower facilities and get a full day in, because the sun rises at 5:30am and sets at about 10:00pm. The campgrounds host an impressive and vast array of caravans and motor homes, but I'll tell you about some of those another time.

Mont Saint Michel is an extraordinary site being an abbey that rises straight out of the sea on a tiny island just off the coast. It is linked to the mainland by a causeway that was built in the 19th Century. It has the highest tides in continental Europe with a difference of up to 15m between low and high tide and the tidal estuary around the Mont is some 250sq kms. This is one of the most impressive things about the Mont. When we visited, it was low tide and it was only from the very top of the Mont that the sea was just visible as a thin blue line on the very distant horizon. There was a sign at the end of the car park saying that “today the sea does not cover this car park” (see picture). Very reassuring!

The town on the mainland just before you get to the Mont is Beauvoir and is Tourist Central and it would not have been surprising to find a Happy Eater and a Tex Mex restaurant. It reminded us a bit of the Niagara Falls or the pyramids at Giza, where the commercial reality of what the tourists come to see is that you get something unbelievably tacky playing as a parasite to a beautiful attraction. Ouch, that was maybe a bit harsh.

The Mont has the abbey perched on the very top of it and houses, hotels and shops on its lower levels. You walk through the houses on narrow cobble stone streets and then climb very steep stairs to get to the Abbey. There has been a building of some religious significance on the Mont since the 8th century and the current abbey was started in the 10th Century. The building itself is rather austere, with very simple lead light windows (no magnificent stained glass here, thank you). It was used as a prison during the French Revolution. There was a very nice cloisters (a small garden enclosed by a double layer of pink granite columns. The dining room was notable because the monks ate in silence – so they seemed to have missed the point of food and wine.

At various times on the tour of the abbey, we were able to see outside to the vast tidal estuary and there were people thousands of people doing tours on the sand – most walking, but some on horseback. We never did find out what the particular purpose of the walking tours was, but with the bitterly cold wind, we weren't tempted to follow there lead.

After several hours on the Mont, we decided that we should stop for something to eat somewhere, as we hadn't had breakfast. We found a small Boulangerie in Pontorson, a small town a couple of ks down the road and less touristy than Beauvoir.

Breakfast consisted of a pain au raisin and a Pepito. A Pepito is two long thin strips of pastry filled with custard and chocolate drops. I'd never seen one before, but new as soon as I did that I had to have one. We took our sugar sensations and went off to find a seat to sit down and enjoy breakfast. There was a couple of seats outside the church just around the corner. Beside the seats were 2 small children who were playing soccer, using the church door as the goal – as you do. When we sat down, two small girls seemed to materialise onto the next seat . Here's Anne and I tucking into this Pepito and beside us are these two young girls looking at us with these sad begging eyes (If you've seen the movie Bolt, you'll know the look). They were well dressed and obviously well fed, so we upped sticks and went and had breakfast somewhere else, without succumbing to their emotional blackmail.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking round Dinan, before having a delicious meal of Brochettes (skewers) of fish (Anne) and meat (David) at the Atelier Gourmand one of Dinan's riverside restaurants.