Mont-St-Michel

Our last stop off in Normandy was a visit to the ultra touristy island of Mont St-Michel. Only a week earlier the French tourist authorities had been complaining that it had been overwhelmed with tourists and that people should not visit.

Bearing this in mind we came up with a plan to visit and avoid as many tourists as possible. We would visit in the evening and first thing the next morning to try and get it as its best. As our base we used an Aire that is 5km away from the island with a handy cycle path that runs straight there.

Mont-St-Michel is a small rocky island in a bay on the North coast of Normandy. It has been built up with an Abbey at the top and high walls around the perimeter. The crypts built under the abbey were designed to support the weight of the church itself at the top of the island.  It was connected to the mainland by a causeway (built in 1878) that flooded at high tide but over the years sand and silt threatened to turn the island into a peninsula so this was replaced by a bridge in 2014.

The bay around Mont-St-Michel is shallow and the tides move very fast – it has been said to move as fast as a galloping horse but while we were there the water was fairly low and a large sandy beach was in evidence around the island.

The first chapel was built on the island in 708 but it wasn’t until it was gifted to the Benedictines in 966 that work started to turn it into an ecclesiastical fortress which resisted blockades by the English three times during the hundred year war.

The main gate to the island is at sea level and the narrow, cobbled Grande Rue leads uphill to the Abbey. The street is lined with medieval buildings, now mostly housing restaurants and gift shops, and sweeps past a small church dedicated to St Michel.

The Abbey itself is entered by a steep set of stairs via a terrace with impressive views across the bay. The Abbey Church is the first part of the building that you enter.

The tourist path through the abbey leads into the cloisters and from there around the refectory, through the crypt and into the guests hall.

The rooms where the monks would have lived and worked were very austere but those where visiting nobility were received have large fireplaces and would have been much more comfortable.

In 1789 after the revolution monasticism was abolished and the Mont was turned into a prison.

The large wooden wheel and pulley was a relatively new addition, only added in 1820 when the Abbey was turned into a prison.  It was used like a hamster wheel with four prisoners walking two abreast inside the wheel in order to hoist up supplies from the bottom of the island.