See The World

with BILL'S EYES

Hard to know if such a place is planned or just evolved.

Our first close-up view of Mont St Michele.

Or have the town plant some great trees.

Ever wondered how the food and other necessities were brought up to an Abbey?

Concarneau.

Chateaulin is a whole lot better than Concarneau.

In the 1800's when this place was used as a prison, 6 prisoners walked inside this wheel to rotate and winch the goods up the slope shown in the previous picture.

Day 24 begins in Port Louis (just to remind my self) and to allow the reader to know where we are. We intend to head in the general direction of Mont Saint Michel but we have a few places along the coast to visit first. In fact we were traveling over a bridge some 10 or so kilometers before Port Louis and said at the time what a pretty village it looked like, so that would be our first point of call this morning. Back-tracking is sometimes a good thing and soon after finding a convenient park (for once) in Belz we are walking along the quay taking pictures of the sights that took our fancy yesterday.

I spy a building with the the words 'HUITRES COQUILLAGES' at the far end of the quay and I am curious enough to check my translation app. Much to my surprise and I know it will be a joy to Lee, it translates to 'Oyster Shells'. A team of horses could not have kept Lee from getting in the door and checking out the seafood on offer, including oysters; PeriWinkles (a very small sea snail in a black shell that Lee remembers as a child picking off rocks in the sea at Port Rickaby - she then boiled them in fresh seawater in her special periwinkle pan and then prized them out of their shells with a sewing needle to be consumed fresh and tasty); mussels; crabs and something called Plates in three sizes (which we thought were scallops as the shells looked the same). 

Lee has been hankering for some fresh seafood so she used sign language to indicate to the non-English speaking counter assistants, the quantity of oysters and plates of size 3 that she wanted. It seems that they do not open the oysters (we say 'shuck' in Australia) so they sold us an appropriate knife as well as a lemon and some white wine to complement the seafood (as you do in France). Lee was very happy.

Then were are off to another town Pont-Aven which is known for its arts and crafts. Exactly why that is the case does not hit us until we park and walk a short distance into the township and we could not stop taking pictures and none of them could be bad. I will let the pictures tell the story but every turn down a lane or garden path revealed another great picture. We thought about having a meal in a restaurant but it was about 3:00 pm and most of them were closing after lunch so we moved on to Concarneau.

We had thought we might stay at Concarneau during the evening at an Aire which was meant to be meters from the seaside township. Well it took us about an hour on top of the predicted GPS time of one and half hours to locate the Aire. It turned out to be a plain Aire, that means it was a carpark. Some 600 meters from 'Centre Ville'. We parked at the Aire and took a stroll to the town centre and the ramparts and seaside fort that is the centre piece of this seaside township. 

Having done the self-guided tour we were not inspired to stay. It was about 6:30 pm so off we travel some more to a place somewhere closer to our goal of Mont Saint Michel and end up at Chateaulin in a lovely caravan park with hot showers, power for our devices and a beautiful riverside view. It was late when we arrived so the oysters will need to be shucked another time.

A view out to sea but the flats at low tide are known to include quicksand, hence you will not see me out there We did see groups of people traipsing about there during the day.

How do you live in such a picturesque place?

Or this.

Plates and plates and more plates.

A kid in a candy shop.

This hall was meant to be the annual meeting place of the Knights Templar but none ever meet there, although Popes and Kings made the pilgrimage.

What a find.

The boats plonk themselves.

Belz on an overcast day.

How do you manufacture this.

The bridge is not wood but you 'wood' not have known unless I told you.

Or have nature plonk some stones in the right place.

A view of the township from the wall of the Abbey.

This will be more recognisable without the mist.

The township at street level.

Every turn is a new vista.

Day 25 is upon us and less than a week till our adventure in France is over. It will be hard giving up our home and independence. The independence being exhibited by our choice today to travel 250 kms to Mont St Michel and to forego seeing any townships in between. Such is the nature of this type of traveling, in that you make decisions based on limited knowledge, happenstance and luck and take the consequences- since there WILL be places we have passed that some would say we should have visited or should not have missed. That however is not in the spirit of this type of travel.

Lee has done a lot of research about France and formed a view of those places that she and I would like to see and we have endeavored to include them in the path of our travels and almost every destination has revealed something worthwhile to see or do and at times the unexpected diversion has been just as rewarding and at times disappointing. That is the nature of this type of travel.

Well the kilometers pass but it is about 2:30 pm when we arrive at the vast complex that precedes Mont St Michel.

You may not be familiar with this extremely popular destination but it will take just one of the pictures below for you to recognize the destination. In fact some 2.5 Million people per year make this a chosen place to visit.

We are not sure how vast the actual Mont St Michel is but the parking area seems as large as a small city and the village (created especially for this site with hotels, shops and dining places) is large as well. Lee thinks it may take at least a full day to explore the site so we place our van in the designated spot that will cost 19 Euro for 24 hours.

We have lunch (seems that late lunch is the norm) and then just to explore we walk the 400 meters to the free shuttle terminal that will take us the kilometer or so to the base of the Mont.

The pictures do not convey that the Mont is a rocky outcrop some kilometer from the shore which consists of a swampy land at the delta of a river that regularly floods the area and in past days has isolated the rocky outcrop and the surrounding low lying seabed.

Today the pressure of maintaining visitor numbers has ensured that a raised roadway is provided to allow access under all conditions.

The shuttle is packed with people from all over the world and the trip takes about 10 minutes. Off the shuttle and the Mont is shrouded in mist so the first closer pictures are not very clear. We walk the 200 meters or so to the entrance and begin our exploration of Mont St Michel. As is expected there are numerous steps (no I did not count them this time) which lead us first about the base of some of the vast stone structures above us. We traipse the battlements since this has been a bastion and pilgrimage of the Christian Church for over one thousand years and never breached. 

We somehow end up at the entrance to the Abbey tour and pay the 9 Euros each plus the 4.50 Euro for an audio tour. 

We have now had the opportunity to walk and experience many castles, grand seminaries, churches and abbeys and each of them has similar features and it can be difficult to appreciate the small and sometimes large differences between these structures. 

However, each makes their own impression and for me I was very taken by one particular room that was built in 1031 AD. Yes that is nearly 1000 years ago. It was made on the side of an existing rock wall and has a 9 meter span sideways with the semicircular ceiling some 12 meters above the floor level just using granite sourced from a quarry some 35 kilometers away. The Abbey did not just appear as the grand plan of one person but has evolved over the centuries and each addition depicts the architecture of the day most notably in the style of the columns, their adornment and the shape and type of wall openings.

There were many other grand and beautiful rooms and halls on many levels and the self-guided tour took as about two hours to navigate. Once out of the still active Abbey we exited to the township which although located on an island is a living township since we saw people in their homes. However at street level the township is full of tourist oriented shops.

We walk back to the shuttle pickup point and this time the Mont is clear of the fog and our pictures, although not quite what the eye sees is much more majestic and clear than our previous pictures.

Back at the van it is time to have dinner and Lee has a shucking great time preparing the oysters and soon we are enjoying the fruits of the sea and find out that what we thought were scallops was in fact a different type of oyster called 'plates' with a more fishy flavor than the other oysters. Well we decided that we did not need two days to experience Mont St Michel ,so we are off tomorrow to see who knows what.

What you do is create a great garden.

Lee having a shucking good time.

Getting closer but still shrouded in mist.

Pont-Aven begins. Even the backyards look great.

Or this.

Our resting place for the night.

A view back to the mainland across the flat expanse.