One of the definite highlights of my trip was getting a chance to visit Mt. St. Michael, in Normandie, France. Mt. St. Michael is the name of the Cathedral, Abbey, Town, and the Island which sitsin a large bay off the English Channel. The island has long been a destination for pilgrims, as early as the 4th Century Roman soldiers visited the Mithraic temple there, later the curch established an outpost there and eventually constructed the cathedral there. I had been looking forward to this opportunity for over 10 years, and I was even more impressed than I had thought I would be.
When I first arrived, the fog was too thick to see more than 15 feet, but it gradually burned off, and by noon there was a clear blue sky.
The tide in particular itself is pretty interesting here. Mt. St. Michael sits in the world's second largest tidal wash, after Hudson Bay. The shoreline travels over 15 kilometers between low and high tides, and the incoming tide moves at about 1 meter per second. Here you can see the tide coming in as a small shelf of water. First is comes up the river channel, then flows over the banks to cover the rest of the bay. When the tide is out, the island is surrounded by acres and acres of sand, much of it quicksand. Thanks to this, the English never captured Mt. St. Michael during the Hundred Years War. Of course, a few pilgrims were lost along the way as well.
