Hiking Cancale to Mont Saint Michel, Days 3 and 4

After eating enough oysters in Cancale to cure our sickness, we were ready to go and finish our hike. If you haven’t read about Day 1 and 2 of our hike you should probably do that first. We were now feeling fresh and determined to walk the rest of the way to our final destination – Mont Saint Michel. The first couple of miles were still on the headlands over the water but eventually we made our way down to the beach marshes and dunes that we would follow the rest of the way there. It was now flat…. but it was also a bit boring. No more beautiful craggy points and beaches to go up and around. But we still found some interesting stuff to see.

After our (relatively) easy 9.5 mile hike, our hotel tonight was in Le Vivier Sur Mer. Another very small town that didn’t have much going on. There were a few seafood restaurants but most weren’t open on this Monday night. So… we decided to stay in our hotel and ate a forgettable meal that you would expect to find in a hotel restaurant. The next day we ended up on a levee that we would follow most of the way to the end. We saw a lot of dunes, a lot of sheep, a lot of windmills, and one very old church.

The last day was a long one – 15 miles. We were now focused on our end goal – the abbey of Mont Saint Michel. We first saw it in the mist on day 2 outside of Cancale. Now it was visible all the time and just kept getting bigger. The levee trail was lined up perfectly with it so it was a great motivator to get to the end.

We had reserved 2 nights in a farm stay Airbnb in a town a couple of miles away from the abbey. It was really great to show up and be reunited with our rolly bags that had been driven here 5 days ago. Our place had bikes to borrow so we decided not to not walk to Mont Saint Michel that day (after 15 miles) and we would go there on bikes the next day. I thought I would be disappointed waiting another day, but our legs were really tired and we had no regrets on waiting until we could get there by bike. Our Airbnb was part of a farm stand and wine gift shop that had it’s own petting zoo. It was also just down the hill from a working windmill (moulin) that still grinds flour that you can purchase.

The next day was focused on checking out the abbey at Mont Saint Michel. We rode our free bikes there in the morning and took way too many pictures as we got near. It really looks like a Disneyland castle and it just doesn’t seem like it can be a real-life thing. But, people were everywhere. A steady stream of people were walking on the causeway or taking the huge buses to get to the “island”. It technically isn’t an island because it is connected to the mainland at low tide. The bridge makes it connected all the time. Once on the island, we joined the swarm of people through the narrow streets and then climbed the hill to tour the abbey. It really is a huge church and abbey that feels almost like a castle and it was very cool to see the whole thing. Unfortunately, the crowds also just made it feel like a annoying tourist attraction and it didn’t take us long to want to get back to our bikes. While I think it is a very worthwhile bucket list item, I don’t think I will ever need to see it again.

Over all we really enjoyed this hike and are eager to do some more short thru-hiking. This was about 50 miles altogether with 4 days worth of hiking and a one day break right in the middle. We were happy the way it worked out even though we struggled a bit with sickness the first couple of days and the weather wasn’t perfect. We never got really rained on much but it was always threatening and was cool and overcast most of the time. We are now heading to the other side of France to do another 4 day hike in the Alsace region near Strasbourg and Colmar.