Was it a dream? Moules Marinère... in a medieval castle floating in the sea.
Up earlier than I would have liked to catch the TGV from Montparnasse to Normandy, my destination: Le Mont St Michel. On account of the reasonably long train journey to Brittany, lunch consisted of sandwiches, which I had made up last night, and a simple rocket salad in a tupperware box.
I made good headway through the closing chapters of War and Peace on the train, the bleak and foreboding fields of Northern France under a grey winter sky replaced the need to imagine Tolstoy’s description of the plight of the Russian and the French armies on the battlefields of Europe so very far from home.
When finally I arrived, the wind and rain were lashing across the causeway to the medieval citadel on Mont St Michel. Modern hydrology means that the flow of the sea is less dramatic than in times past, but at this time of year the spring tides brought by the alignment of the sun and the moon mean the castle is still occasionally cut off by the advancing waters. During the Hundred Years War, the almost unique position of the settlement meant that it was impregnable to attack. In more recent times, it's dramatic position in the shifting sands, famous for their oyster and mussel fisheries, and salt-marsh lamb, led to the settlement being used as a prison. Happily, now, the veneration of God has returned to Mont St Michel and the abbey is once again functional.
I made my way through the improbable winding streets and alleys of the village that lead up to the abbey that tops the rock-face. These streets have been home to shopkeepers and food sellers catering to pilgrims for almost a thousand years—little has changed, only now the pilgrims come from further afield and lack religious motivations. I thought for a moment that a sign on a public fountain just inside the drawbridge declaring "Not to be used for the washing of feet!" was to stop the few pilgrims that do still come to the abbey of the archangel from washing their feet, in the manner that Christ's feet were washed. A photograph showing tourists covered in mud from the approach to the mount quickly dispelled this romantic notion.
By the time I emerged from the corridors and halls of the abbey and on to the terraces over looking the bay, the sky had cleared and everything was bathed in sunlight. Descending by ancient staircases away from the throngs of tour groups, I went down to the beach. The tide was out and the sand stretched away from me like water for kilometre after kilometre such that the distant sea was only a shimmer on the horizon. I tiptoed over the rocks to a chapel, seldom visited by tourists and only accessible at low tide on a tiny spit of rock. By this time, the golden disk of the sun hung low in the sky and I returned to my accommodation for a shower.
Returning across the long causeway for dinner, with the mount lit up in the distance, a storm could be seen raging out to sea—the horizon occasionally lit up by lightning. But just above me the sky was clear and, on account of the new moon, the firmament reigned overhead, ablaze with the winter constellations and Venus, the brightest heavenly body. I found a small restaurant set into the ramparts of the citadel and sat by the fire eating moules marinère with frites (perhaps I should pen a recipe for that delicious dish) and a glass of delicious Muscadet.
Lunch: cheddar cheese sandwiches with dijon mustard, and a rocket salad.
Dinner: Moules marinère, with frites and a glass of muscadet (…in a castle …in the sea).
