Mont Saint Michel, France by Mel

Bonjour du Mont St Michel (Hello from the Mont St Michel),
Saturday the 21st of June, we left Paris to go to the Mont St Michel.
We hired a car for the rest of our trip in France. I did the math, train for 4 people against car and the price was very close. Having a car make it easier for us, so we decided to go for a car in France.
It took us around 5 hours with lunch break to get to Beauvoir, a little town just before the Mont St Michel. The house we are staying is really nice. They even have toys for the kids, which they got in very quickly.
As it was the ‘Fete de la musique’ (music celebration day), we went to Avranches, the bigger town, to listen to some music. I always loved the fete de la musique. People are out in the street and there are bands, dance parties, music everywhere. In Avranches we saw 2 different dance groups: one doing Zumba and the other one country dance. Then we listen to a 3 English person band (one bass, one guitar/singer and one drummer) playing some rock songs. They were across a little restaurant, so we got some food and drinks and stayed there for a while listening to them. Kev and I could have stayed longer, but it was getting late and the kids were getting tired, so we called it a night and went back. On the way back, we saw a band made of teenage kids playing. We listened to a couple of their songs and left as Emma was falling asleep!
It was a good evening!
The next day, we went to the Mont St Michel.
First a bit of history about it: The granite rock of Mont Saint-Michel was originally known as Mont Tombe. In 708, the archangel Michel appeared in a dream-vision to Saint Aubert, bishop of Avranches, and asked him to build a sanctuary in his name. The bishop didn’t listen the first 2 dreams, but he decided to do it after the third dream. There is a fun story here: In one of the churches of Avranches is the skull of St Aubert. The skull has a hole in it and it was said that angry to have not been obeyed the first 2 times, The archangel Michel, touched the bishop on the head and left a hole in it, hence why the bishop listened the third time! He built a small church on top of Mont Tombe and called it the Mont Saint Michel.
In 966, a community of Benedictines established itself and built the first church. At the same time, a village began to develop below the Mount to welcome the first pilgrims.
During the 11th-century, as more and more pilgrims come to the Mont Saint Michel, four crypts are added around the tip of the rock, and a large abbey church is built on top of these. In the 13th century, Philippe Auguste (the king of France), after the conquest of Normandy (adding it to the French kingdom), give some money to build in Gothic style, the Merveille: This is a of two three-storey buildings, topped by the cloister and the monks’ refectory.
During the Anglo-Franco 100 years war (14-15th centuries), some military constructions were made to protect the Mont and were proven efficient, as the Mont withstand a siege of almost 30 years. It is the only French stronghold which was never taken by the English during that war.
But during the siege, part of the choir in the Abbey collapsed and was replaced at the end of the siege by the gothic choir that we can see now.
During the French revolution, the Mont became a prison until 1863, where the prison was closed and the Mont Saint Michel open to the public again.
In 1979, UNESCO added Mont Saint-Michel and its bay to its list of World Heritage sites.
I always love knowing the history of places: they always have several lives, uses, phases and I love imagining what they looked like 1000 years ago and how was life back then. Touching a wall that was touched by hands several centuries prior never cease to amaze me.
The Mont Saint Michel is one of the most visited tourist site in France. Being almost in the high season, I was a bit worried it would be too busy, but it was ok. There were a lot of people there, but we could move around and walk easily (which is hard to do during the peak season).
We decided to walk to the Mont Saint Michel instead of taking the car. We learnt that the parking price is insane, so we did the cheap and healthy thing and walked for an hour. The country side is beautiful, so it was no bother.
When we arrived, we walked toward the abbey which is at the top of the island. I love walking on the rampart around the place and in the small zigzagging streets of the Mont. The abbey is wonderful to visit: there is so much more than just the church. As explain before, monks have been living here for centuries, so there are all their living areas to see as well. We took our time to visit and appreciate the place. There was a mass in the morning and we stayed at the back of the church for a bit to listen to the pipe organ being played while people were singing. I am not a believer but it is amazing to hear music in religious places.
After the abbey, we walked around the Mont and did the 4 small museums of the island: the maritime museum; the archeoscope which has a 10 minutes show about the history of the Mont with lovely light, sound and a maquette of the Mont St Michel emerging from water (it was nice); the historic residence of Knight Bertrand Du Guesclin and his wife Tiphaine de Raguenel, a famous astrologer who used to foretell the destiny of the world in the stars who lived in the 14th century. One of the object in the house, was a chastity belt that wifes of knights were forced to wear when their husband was going away for months or years sometime, which open conversation with the kids on the horror women in place and time, had and still have to go through. We finished with the historical museum with the dungeon used as prison.
We of course went through some of the souvenir shops (there are a lot of them) and bought our magnet. We walked back to our place and were pretty happy to arrive! We were on our feet all day and bodies (well Kev and I) were starting to hurt! It is not fun getting old! The kids were fine!!!
We had a nice evening playing board games and then bed.
The next day, we didn’t do much. The kids did their blog and Kev and I tried to plan the UK part, but it took us for ever to decide of the itinerary and looking for cheap but not too horrible accommodation in London. We didn’t and gave up after several hours of looking though website we ended up with a massive headache and quitted! We’ll have to do another planning day soon.
Our last day in Beaulieu we went back to Avranches to visit the historical area this time. I had a map of Avranche with the point of interest on it and an itinerary already planned. The kids were in charge: they had the map and take turn to take us to the next place of interest on the map and read the information about it. They both did great at reading the map. They only needed help a couple of time. There was 21 stops on the map and we did it all (actually there were 22, but the last one was to far for my liking so we skipped it!) We saw statues of historical peoples, monuments dedicated to people who died at war, old towers from the wall which use to protect the city, the old fort, some beautiful gardens, an art gallery, houses and buildings from the 11th century, half timbered house from the 14th century, churches and basilica, we walked on cobbled narrow streets with moss covered walls.. It was a great, interesting and fun tour for the four of us. One of my favourite stop was the Scriptorial where manuscripts written by the monks of Mont Saint Michel from the 11th century and up, are kept and a few are on display. There were also explanations on how and with which tool they used to work, how to make the colours, the different roles (the scribe, the rubricator, who add the details and lettering like capitals in different colours, the one who wrote annotation to give more information and details about the text, the one doing the illustration and I’m sure I forgot some). It was super interesting and looking at books written 10 centuries ago, with the attention to details they had was incredible.
It took us the whole day and it was a wonderful day.
The next morning we were off again to Rennes, a bigger town 1 hour away from Beauvoir, to see my wonderful niece Manon and Nathan, her boyfriend. Excited!!!
See you there.
MelRead more