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Published: July 11th 2008
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Mont St Michel
Mont St Michel From Bayeux (Normandy) to St Malo (Brittany) , the drive takes though the part of Normandy known as the Suisse Romande. The river Orne has cut through the massif creating steep banks and the occasional severe peak. The area is popular for outdoor activities,. We saw hang gliders from the Pain de Sucre. We also passed through Mortain, Hitler’s last stand before his army was destroyed in Normandy. On the way to St Malo, we passed by the Benedictine island monastery of St Mont St Michel which had it’s greatest influence in the 12-13th centuries. Approaching St Malo we pass by the seaside town of Cancale - famous for it’s delicious farmed oysters. The drive reminded me of the Eric Rohmer film - “Pauline at the Beach” which was filmed in this area.
Our hotel in St Malo is The Elizabeth (www.st-malo-hotel-elizabeth.com ) . The hotel was a mansion "Les Armateurs", built in the early XVII th century, and one of the oldest preserved buildings inside the Walls of Saint-Malo. The city was once a major port and is encircled by ramparts. A suburb of St Malo, Rotheneuf. is the birthplace of Jacques Cartier who sailed up the St Lawrence
Walls around St Malo
Walls around St Malo River to Montreal in 1534. The town has a fine museum of his exploits. In 1532, the French King Francois I visited the Mont St Michel pilgrimage site. On his way back, he asked Jacques Cartier who was from St Malo to find a northern route to Asia through North America. The brave captain thus discovered the St Lawrence River and the eastern coast of Canada, but the severe winter forced him to drop anchor at a place now called Montreal. He made 3 more trips back and forth, each time bringing with him more and more French immigrants whose descendants, five centuries later, are now the "French cousins from America".
East of Dinard on the D186 is the world’s first dam to generate electricity using tidal power. The tides here are among the highest in the world. The area around St Malo is known as the Emerald Coast. It was a vacation spot for the rich for the last century. Saint-Malo became notorious as the home of the corsairs, French
privateers and sometimes pirates. The corsairs of Saint-Malo not only forced English ships passing up the Channel to pay tribute, but also brought wealth from further afield.
Located
View from St Malo
Swimming pool gets filed twice per day by 8m high tides. in the north of Brittany, St Malo was named after Father MacLaw, a Welsh monk and bishop who fled Wales to Brittany in 538. In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, St Malo acquired considerable wealth, not only from its maritime trade between the Americas and Europe but also, and mainly, from the very lucrative ventures of its corsairs. The trade generated by the "Newfoundlanders", those fleets that set off to fish for cod in Newfoundland (east coast of Canada), accounted for some of St Malo’s prosperity and glory. However, its most profitable business, without a doubt, came from capturing merchant English and Dutch vessels with the King of France's blessing!
The high seas were lawless zones making a passage on international waters treacherous. France and England were constantly fighting each other, and sometimes Holland and Spain as well. Each country’s king encouraged private ship owners to equip their boats with cannons and go after enemy foreign vessels. Corsairs were not really pirates in that they did need a permit, signed by the king himself. This "Lettre de course" (“Privateering Letter”) was a formal authorization to carry out their business under very strict regulations. For instance, the booty had to
Home and museum of Jacques Cartier
Home and museum of Jacques Cartier be divided into thirds: one share for the king, one for the ship owner and one for the crew.
The Fortified Abbey at Mont Saint Michel, a monastery built at the top of a rocky islet that overlooks the sea, right at the border between Brittany and Normandy. The statue of Archangel Saint Michael towers 560 feet above the English Channel. Mont Saint Michel was an island until a causeway was built at the end of the 19th century. It was separated from the mainland by one mile of sand at low tide, or by water at high tide. The range in tides is one of the greatest in Europe: it can be 46 feet between high and low water marks. The bay around the Mont is absolutely flat and the rising tide is said to sometimes match the speed of a galloping horse. In the early 8th century, according to catholic lore, Archangel Saint Michael instructed the bishop of Avranches, Saint Aubert, to build the monastery. From the year 1000 on, and for 6 consecutive centuries thereafter, the Dukes of Normandy and the pilgrims financed the construction of additional structures despite the difficulty of building on an
Eating oysters in Cancale
Caught fresh from the wharf island only accessible by foot.
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