Mont St.- Michel with Waders

Mont Saint-Michel is one of the great monuments of European architecture, not much more than an hour from Rennes, where we are staying with friends.

The climb to the top is substantial, and we did not go all the way. I took many potential blips; this was as we returned to our car. By then it was sunny, and the group of bare-legged youngsters provides a bit of context: They are set to walk out on to the extensive tidal flats which surround the huge rock on which the abbey is built (as we drove out a bit later, they had reached the edge). They had to be very careful, for high tide was due in the next few hours; it comes in at great speed and is potentially lethal.

(My apologies to any British birders who may have taken the mention of "waders" in the title as referring to birds :)

A year earlier we had just begun a four-day trip to Poland.