Mont-Saint-Michel: The Abbey, the Bay and the Walk Across the Sands

Required Activities

• Climb the steep stair called the Gouffre into the abbey's salle des Gardes, then work round the Merveille on the north side to stand under its eastern gable and the tapering tour des Corbins, and pick out the gilded Saint Michael on the spire 157.10 m above the shore

• Cross the bay barefoot with an authorised guide from the Bec d'Andaine at Genêts, 14 km on the sands, and find the places where the guide stops to show you quicksand and the channels of the Sée and the Sélune

• Walk the whole 200 m of the Grand-Rue from the Porte du Roi to the abbey steps and find three of its named houses — the corbelled maison de l'Arcade, the maison de l'Artichaut, and the logis of Tiphaine Raguenel of 1366 with the Romanesque doorway beside it — then come back down along the ramparts

• At the entrance to La Mère Poulard, watch the beaters in traditional dress whip the eggs in rhythm in a big copper bowl, then see the omelettes cooked in long-handled pans over a wood fire — the dish Annette Poulard was already famous for in Le Figaro in 1884, in the house her family rebuilt in 1888