This afternoon Mr M, Daisy and I arrived back from a quick, overnight jaunt to England to collect a friend and her puppy who are making their way to Greece for the summer. To travel between England and France, with pets, the most simplest and quickest way is taking the Eurotunnel, which connects Calais and Folkestone. We three did this trip back in January when we dropped the same friend to London to live, and I filmed it, which I thought fitting to share here today as it was fun to revisit and relive the journey. 

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Exploring Etretat

Two weeks ago Mr M declared that he just had to get out of Paris for a couple of days and I had to tell him where we'd go. Of course we had to go to the coast, but as we'd just been to Deauville, which is the closest beach to the city, I picked the next closest, nice beach I knew of, Etretat. We had both been before but loved it, so we very excited to spend two days lying on the beach and swimming in the ocean until our skin was all pruney. But, Monday afternoon, as we drove deeper and deeper into Normandy and the sky slowly gave way to clouds and the windscreen wipers had to be turned on on more than one occasion, we realised that this trip wouldn't be the one we had our hearts set on having. I was hopeful as we sat on a great little terrace in direct falling sunlight for dinner of moules et frites, my favourite sea-side feast, and then went to play on the beach in front of the most gorgeous pink sunset, that the next day would bring a little heat and sunlight for us to enjoy.

 But Tuesday we woke to this;

A little disappointing as on my previous trip, almost three years ago to the day, this vista had looked like this;

So we took shelter in the hire car and just started driving. As we drove through all the gorgeous towns on our way north to Dieppe for lunch, through the drizzle some bunting caught my eye.

We'd happened upon the most amazing brocante and mercerie store I'd ever seen.

Housed in a former grocery warehouse, La Courtepointe consists of an entrance and three different rooms: a large space in the back full of antiques in all shapes and sizes, a small room off the entry bursting with various haberdashery items once treasured long ago and and a room housing ancient fabric and linen opposite. It felt like I'd stepped back in time. There was no way we could have left empty handed; Mr M got himself some used oil cans and we picked an old, slightly tattered educational poster of a map of greater Paris which I can't wait to frame and put up in our entrée gallery.

After dinner at the same place we had eaten at the night before (it was really great!) we jumped in the car and headed south to be able to catch the sunset from the top of the cliffs. By then, luckily, it had stopped raining. We drove around the golf course at the top of the headland to try to access the peak, but, alas, you just can't. Instead we drove through some amazing wheat fields, past some very angry cows, discovered a light house and stumbled across some abandoned Nazi Germany Atlantic Wall bunkers - jackpot for the history-lover that is Mr M. 

After shuffling under some barbed wire to go climb over the bunkers, avoiding cow patties, we high-tailed back to Etretat to climb the cliffs from the beach before nightfall.

We made it back just in time. Enormous spotlights met us as we got back down to the beach, either to help people, like us, make their way back down the path - my theory - or for the surfers to keep doing what they're doing into the night - Mr M's theory. Either way, the one row of red and one row of blue made an electric French flag right along the beach and looked more like a contemporary art installation rather than a form of hazard prevention.

We wandered back in the dark for a decent night's sleep before our early start back to Paris in the morning.

Restaurant La Flottille
22, rue Alphonse Karr, 76790 ETRETAT
Website

La Courtepointe
35, rue de St Valery, 76450 CANY-BARVILLE
Website

The Antifer Lighthouse (Le Phare d'Antifer)
Location

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Road trip day 7 :: Deauville

Our last night was in Deauville. Out of all the trip I was most excited to stop here because it was the one place I had not yet been. It was love at first sight. I loved its little port, the striking and charming half-timbered architecture and its beautiful square. But what I loved most was the promenade, Les Planches, that hugged the beach in its length. Having spent almost every weekend pre-expat life walking the promenade along Manly is was so nice to once again stroll along a beach, filling our lungs with its salty air. The little changing cabins that border the promenade named for people in cinema that have visited Deauville remind you of its heyday as the resort town of the rich and famous. It was very quiet as we we walked the promenade, as the high season had not yet hit the town, but you could see preparations were well underway for the influx of holidaymakers that will descend in August. 

After previous summers spent at Saint Tropez and Nice it was refreshing to visit another French sea-side town, still beautiful and grand, much more relaxed. It was a lovely way to spend the last morning of our holiday before the drive back to Paris.

xx

Road trip day 6 :: Mont Saint Michel; then, now, next

Two years ago I visited Mont Saint Michel with a good friend. We were staying at Saint Malo and took the train to Pontorson then hired bikes to cycle the rest of the way. By chance the day we were to visit was the same day the Tour de France was going to go right by Mont Saint Michel so we raced it, so to speak, to catch the cyclists as they flew by. We then cycled the rest of the way, right up to to island, to take a look.

That was then.
One of the most striking features of the abbey is the isolation from the mainland that happens when the tide comes in and floods the causeway, built in 1879, completely surrounding the island by water. However, studies conducted in 1995 revealed that if the ecosystem was to be left as it was, by 2040 the entire bay of Mont Saint Michel would be covered in sediment and turn to marshlands and the original isolating spirit of Mont Saint Michel would be lost.
Since 2009 plans have been underway to restore the Mont Saint Michel bay to its original and natural state. A dam has been built at the opening of the Couesnon river that will help push sand from the estuary back out to sea and since August last year the 130 year-old causeway has been closed to the public.

Now visitors to Mont Saint Michel are now required to park their vehicles or bicycles in the new reception car park and journey the rest of the way to the island either by complementary shuttle-bus, as we did on day 6 of our trip, or on foot - by foot takes approximately 40 minutes. As you approach the Mont you can see the skeleton of the new jetty and bridge as they are taking form.

By the end of 2014 the new one-kilometre-long causeway and its 750m bridge will be completed, which will allow water to flow freely underneath when the tide comes in surrounding the Mont and for a couple of hours in the day the causeway and bridge will be flooded. To be able to visit the island it will still be required to take a shuttle-bus, but from architectures' impressions of the work the jetty and bridge will look so charming that the stroll to the Mont will be a part of the pleasure of the visit. As the bridge will curve slightly, you will see the different perspectives and outlines of the Mont so that every 20 metres or so its form will take on a new shape and different features of its architecture will become visible. It would also be so impressive to approach via foot and cross the bay over the water, especially if the tide is coming in, to appreciate the true freak of nature that the island is.
In 2015 the original causeway, over a century old, will be dismantled and the work will have been completed. Environmentalists predict that it will take still a few more years following for the bay to naturally return to its original state.

I know another trip will have to be scheduled for two years time to see the work completed and to appreciate Mont Saint Michel just as the monks that built it did, some 13 hundred years ago. 

After Mont Saint Michel we stopped briefly for a somber moment at the D-Day beaches lookout over Arromanches-les-Bains before we continued to Deauville and Trouville for our last night away. 

xx

More information on access to Mont Saint Michel can be found here; accueilmontsaintmichel.fr
For further details on the works, see here; projetmontsaintmichel.fr