Mont St Michel

Before we hit the battlefields, Adam indulged me in one more thing by letting us visit Mont St Michel.  The sight has been an excursion for Christian pilgrims (and now so, so many tourists) for a thousand years.  There is just one tiny little road leading from the massive parking lots (think about 10 Super Walmarts put together) across the muddy walkway (don’t mistime the tide!) and up the island to the Abbey.

In 1878 in an attempt to keep traffic flowing regardless of the tide, a causeway was built across the bay.  It was successful in allowing more people onto the island, however it also stopped the flow of water around the island and silted up the bay.  In 2010 environmentalist decided that the island needed to be returned to an island state, so the causeway was taken out leaving the muddy walkway.  In 2012, the proprietors on the island noticed a drop in their revenues and started a campaign for a bridge.  This was approved late last year and construction has just begun.  At the moment, there is a lot of scaffolding and many tractors, backhoes, and earthmovers.  If you can hold off visiting until July 2014, they claim it’ll be done and you won’t have to consult your sea tables before planning your day.

Being a typical European tourist attraction, or at least something that Adam & I would think is fun to visit, it starts with roughly 8,000 stairs.

Most of the west end of the Abby was destroyed by a fire in 1776, but it has allowed you to see the original floor.  The numbers you see were from the stone masons.  As they were paid by the stone, they carved their number into each they supplied so they could be paid at the end of the job.

The Abby is beautiful on the inside, though much smaller than originally built due to the above mentioned fire and the collapse of the south east crypt in 1421.  As the Abby was built on the top of a pointy rock, the architects first built four sturdy crypts to support each of the four corners of the main building to support such a huge structure.  Apparently this strategy only worked for the first 700 years of the Abby’s life.

One part remaining of the Abby is the original kitchens.  I think you could probably entertain a few people with a fireplace that big!

Looking down from the top of the Abby you can see back to the mainland and, at low tide, a lot of mud.  We watched a group of a dozen or so people try to trek somewhere in the mud.  We have no idea where they were going – there was nothing that we could see in the direction they were walking and the tide was coming in.

Finally, a £10 Starbucks gift card for anyone who knows what this is for (other than poking unsuspecting tourists as they come out of the previous room).