Mont St Michel - Abbeys and Omelettes

After a 6am Sheep Run (sheep coming back from where-ever they had gone the night before directly past our van) we packed up the van and headed towards Le Mont d Michel. The Mont  is actually a rock in the middle of tidal salt flats and was once totally isolated at high tide (due to the road for tourists this now no longer happens, although the French plan to remove a 100m section of the road and replace it with a bridge to stop silting around the roads.

Walking the streets of Mt St Michel

Benedictine monks then built the abbey ontop of the rock which Christians frequented on pilgrimage. As a result, a village was soon established on the rock below the abbey and outer walls and ramparts were built fortifying the structure. The result was that over the following centuaries Mt St Michel remained impregnable to numerous attacks and sieges. Our guide told us that every year 4million visitors still pilgrimage to Mt St Michel including one of the astronauts from the first moon landings who left behind one of the 3 sets of rosary beads he took to the moon with him because he was so moved by the holiness he felt.

Where's Wally - oh no its just Tom

Dave with the great Saint Michel (aka Michael - Dave was concerned about the French calling guys Mich-elle)

Over the salt flats

Thumping out an omelette tune.... whisk, thump, whisk, thump, wh-wh-wh-whisk, thump - you probably had to be there

The village at the bottom of Mt St Michel is also famous for its omelettes, which the chefs mix with a musical pattern of whisks and thumps on the edge of the bowls – a whole new level of fun in cooking fusing cooking with percussion, I like to call it cookcussion. Anyway of course we couldn’t resist having a try of the local fare. PS anything with goats cheese in it is also becoming a great favourite with Dave and I YUMMMMM!

The famous Omelette restaurant

Le Omelette

We jumped back into Mulder and let Jim guide us to Nante in the Loire Valley where we had our first glance of Le Tour on TV. It was here we noticed that the boys were actually quite close to us and so we decided to delay our winery visiting to go in search of the bikes the next day.

We finished the day with pizza at Pinnocio Italian restaurant with many random French lessons from the staff. Oh did I forget to mention that wine was only 4€ 40 per carafe, so you can imagine the state we were in – although a few reds does make learning French a lot easier J.