26/09/08 - Some very impressive former islands.

A short drive through the quickly clearing fog for our first stop
today - St Malo. Once a fortified island at the mouth of the river
Rance, this walled town is now joined to the mainland by way of a
promenade and resulting beach. We walked along the beach to an
outlying fort, past huge breakwaters and got a feel for the extremely
large tidal differences in this area - this difference, between low
and high tide, can be 15 metres in height! We arrived when the tide
was quite low but postcard pictures of waves crashing over the
breakwaters showed us just why these are needed at high tide.

We then walked through the walls and explored this very impressive
granite town. Almost completely destroyed during the Second World
War, this is another example of careful restoration which has ensured
the town's narrow streets retain their charm.

Once we'd enjoyed a coffee in the sun, it was onward to France's
second most recognisable silhouette (the first being the Eiffel
Tower) - Mont St Michel (pronounced Michelle, not Michael as we had
been doing).

Another former island that is now joined to the mainland due to a long
sandspit, this 80 metre high island was visible to us from about 20
kilometres out. The closer we got, the more impressive it became,
with its Benedictine abbey towering above the tightly packed houses
that wind round the bottom, and the kilometres of tidal sand streching
far out to sea. In only a few hours, this sand would be completely
covered in water in a tidal change that perhaps could best be
described as 'where the waters rise faster than galloping horses'. We
got this description from the guidebook where it unfortunately doesn't
quote where it got it from.

We found ourselves a view point from a turret on the 'island' to
witness the tide come in - you definitely could witness the water
moving up the bay, although we decided we didn't need to sit up there
for the whole 6 hours of tidal change to get the idea.

It was then back on the move across the Normandy countryside to our
first view of the D-day landing beaches - where on the 6th of June
1944 hundreds of thousands of allied solders landed in the largest
amphibious invasion in history as they began the push across Europe to
defeat Hitlers Nazi Germany.