Visiting Mont St Michel has been a long term ambition of mine so it was with great pleasure that our travelling party were able to drive there from St Lunaire on our last morning officially in Brittany. If you look at the map, Mont St Michel looks like it is on Bretagne territory but history tells a different story. Its place on the border of Normandy goes back to 933 when during the battles for power in the region, William Longsword, the ‘Duke of Normandy’, took over the area and Mont St Michel became part of Normandy.
There is a curious reference in the Bayeux Tapestry to Mont St Michel and the doomed English warrior, Harold Godwinson who later became Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England. Before he took the throne of England, he had been accidentally blown off course in the English Channel in 1064 and forced to land in France. He was handed over to William (the Conqueror!) and apparently was invited to join one of the regular battles against William’s enemy in Brittany. The Bayeux Tapestry, developed to illustrate William’s later victory at Hastings, shows Harold rescuing some of William’s knights from the quicksand off Mont St Michel. Harold certainly had a colourful life of 44 years before he died with, supposedly, an arrow through his eye. Mont St Michel was part of Normandy at this time and still remains part of Normandy today.
After a night staying in the Camper Park, Beauvoir Camping aux Pommieres, we drove straight across Normandy, passing around the major city of Caen, noting with sadness the road sign not taken to Bayeux, we arrived at the other edge of Normandy at our destination, Honfleur.
FOGTRAVEL 