P and J's Excellent Adventure: I see raindrops on my window (Joy is like the rain)

We wandered around Avranches in the morning, keeping a weather eye open. It has a botanical garden next to our park-up and then we wound down into the town. It's smaller than I was expecting, but had some interesting things to see. One question we had was why a square was called Thomas Becket place. It turns out that after he was rid of that troublesome priest Henry came over to meet the Pope and make public penance for the dirty deed. It was done on the steps of a church that has since been demolished but is recorded in the square.

I love the shapes this agave has formed - it looks alive - almost threatening!

The shape of the church mentioned above is marked in the square and the front doors are here symbolised. Two high posts (not seen here) mark where the towers were to each side.

View from the castle over the roofs of the old town.

And of course the Patton memorial. He may have come through here, but his 3rd Army certainly did. On the right a dalek memorialises the French 2nd Armoured Division, while on the left is a well preserved Sherman in livery of (then) Colonel Creighton Abrams of 4th Armored Division who often spearheaded the breakout.

View to Mont St Michel, the second most visited location in France (after Paris). We'll see what Covid has done for that.

En route we crossed the Pontaubault bridge. Unlike like it's cousin Pont La Roque, Allied bombers kept missing this one meaning the Germans could continue to use to it to reinforce Normandy, but also the Americans didn't have to repair it when they pushed out.

All in one piece still.

We drove as far as Beauvoir, about 5 kms from the Mont.

Beauvoir park-up: an excellent stop, but I suspect that Covid has left it rather emptier than normal for August! And bonus - it has free (though slow) internet so we did our Windows updates on them.

Now, a bit of a diversion for an amazing sequence of luck. When we packed we had an extra cutlery tray for some reason so that ended in the top of the cupboard. I bought a kitset to do on rainy days so it went under the cutlery tray. I needed glue to make the kits and happened to find some outside Avranches - happy days. When I went to put it in the kit, I could feel water in the cutlery tray. It just happened to be under the aerial wire where it entered Reggie, so had gathered water that had been entering along the cable.

So,

I happened to pack my kit under the tray.
I happened to find glue on a rainy day
The tray happened to be under the cable
I happened to realise what had happened without spilling the contents of the tray

When we got to Beauvoir I got up on the roof and filled the entry point with silicon. It had also been capped, but the silicon had worn out so I gummed that up as well, and hopefully we are good to go! (Just the radiator hose still to go.)

The site included power so we plugged everything possible in. Never let a chance go by, especially during overcast weather...

J rightly decided we should see the Mont now rather than wait for the morning so we walked over. It's a good 5 kms and the weather was closing in (or so we say) so we took a shuttle bus the last 1.5 kms.

Imagine what this would be like if the tour busses were still coming!

The barrier. This is not to keep the tide out. Over the last 40 years the river had been canalised so much it wasn't sluicing out the silt effectively so that the Mont was slowly being surrounded by more and more sand. It got to the point the tide was not running around the mont any longer so something had to be done. The barrier stores water at high tide then at low tide lets it out with enough force to sluice the silt away, slowly reversing the reclamation.

J wondering why they had let the silting get so bad.

See? It was a little bit cloudy.

Looking (vaguely) back to Avranches over an ebbing tide.

The town looks like Hogwarts more than a real town, though people do seem to live there. A good proportion of the properties were businesses but there were some homelike buildings too.