Beside the Seaside

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In Which I Mount Saint Michael

August 14, 2007 by Mike

Langueux

Route: Ger-Ger-Ger-Granville - Le Mont-St-Michel - St-Malo - St-Cast - Langueux

(Langueux, incidentally, where I'm spending the night, is just outside Saint-Brieuc, which would make that list of towns on the route today even more saintly.)

Zavatta Watch
I passed through the territories of two more Zavatta circuses today. I'm starting to think these posters are being put up by some rogue local who has been reading this site and enjoys baffling me. But it's been going on for 100s of miles and I can't think anyone would have the time and patience to read these articles, let alone come up with a wheeze like that. Anyway for the record, in addition to the Family Zavatta, Stephan Zavatta and Achille Zavatta circuses playing the coast this summer, I can now add Thierry Zavatta and Francesco Zavatta.

One of the highlights of the whole trip: seeing the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel rising out of the muddy waters of the bay.

I've been looking forward to this, and as a sight it doesn't disappoint. From a distance and from close up, this mediaeval monolith is beautiful, eerie, mysterious, dominant, epic. I rode down yesterday to see it in sunshine. This morning, the abbey is if anything all the more spectral and special in cloud and rain. It looms. The spires and towers and high walls sit perfectly aligned with the island itself, shaped into a single entity that soars inexorably towards the highest spire of all. Once on the Mount, the houses and the church buildings and the thin, creaking roadway are all as one: colour of rock and stone, crowded in on each other, a jumble of nocks and crannies, of overhanging roofs and hidden twists, impossible angles, a dark courtyard here, steps there leading up and away and behind, a secret corner. It looks like an MC Escher puzzle brought to life.

It's powerful and moving.

A fantasy, fairytale island.

It's *so* full of chattering tourists, hawkers, ticket sellers, braying guides, kitchen staff from any number of creperies and pizza restaurants leaning out of windows having a smoke, Italian families wearing rucksacks and plastic raincoats standing in the middle of a narrow street oblivious to the crush building around them, children crying for ice-cream, shops selling commemorative coffee pots, guide books, fudge, fridge magnets, mounted photographs, tea towels, chocolate boxes, pencils, flags, fizzy drinks, postcards, ceramics, key-rings, ash-trays (there were a couple of priests milling around too) that it seems like the whole island must surely sink into the mud.

Onwards and westwards. I'm into Brittany now, sad to leave Normandy behind. I've loved it - taken by surprise at how attractive it has been. I've been to Brittany before, hitchhiking when I were just a lad. I'll save that for another time.

The houses here are built with different stone - I notice it in the very first village across the border. It's got more warmth to it, a yellow or red infusion whereas the Norman homes are a steely grey.

There are many round towers along the coast. These are former windmills that have long since lost their wings. Most have already been converted into homes (or, more likely, second homes, for Parisians and Londoners, no doubt).

I stop in St-Malo searching for a mobile phone shop. (My phone's playing up. This is serious. If I can't get it fixed I shall obviously have t cancel the whole trip. What? Live without txting?) It takes me by surprise - a walled city that seems to have been built in one go and according to the plans of a single architect. I had no idea because I'm travelling with no guidebooks - the surprises are all part of the fun. Also, just to confuse me, it's been done in a fetching, but rather Normandy-esque, grey. No matter, it's beautiful. Another Channel port on this side of the water that is a delight to see. I suppose I expected all ports to be as dull and dreary as Dover or Harwich. Once inside the walls of the city, there is again a uniformity of appearance. Streets and houses complement each other. Ordinary workaday life really can be played out to an attractive backdrop. I can't help comparing this with the common-or-garden British high street -- so dull and bland and uniformly dull.

The one good thing about the British high street is that it features at least half-a-dozen mobile phone shops. Not France. Oh no. There was only one in Ger-Ger-Granville and it was shut on Monday (open all hours, indeed!) and hadn't been able to help this morning. St-Malo has none -- I was pointed instead to Dinard, across a bridge and very much across the tracks, the overspill where the ugly bits of this area have been shunted. Factories and shops and tower blocks and the like. And a mobile phone shop. Panic over. It wasn't the phone, or the battery, but the charger. Phew. The trip can continue.

St-Lunaire. St-Briac-sur-Mer. St-Jacul-de-la-Mer. Frehel. St Cast-le-Guildo. See - not all the towns and capes round here are named after saints.

Beside the Seaside

In Which I Mount Saint Michael

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