Favourite places: Mont St Michel

I was looking back at photos of friends and I at Mont St Michel in France earlier - 40 years ago this October! It has been one of my favourite places since - along with Corfu also in the '70s, and later Rhodes and Lindos. 

Mont St Michel is one of the most visited and recognisable historic sites in France, and the most magical place along the Normandy and Brittany coastline. It is actually a little island in Normandy, cut off when the tides rise. It is overrun with tourists all year now, like London and any main tourist attraction, but 40 years ago in that wintery October, four of us had it practically all to ourselves as we stayed overnight in a hotel and explored the monastery the next morning. I loved the cloisters at the very top, steeped in history and those views ..... It was magical too walking around the town that rainy night and finding an ideal restaurant. 

It was a strategic fortification since ancient times and one can imagine life there during the dark ages and in medieval times, with monks and pilgrims to its abbey. Mont St Michel and its bay are now part of UNESCO's world heritage sites and well worth a visit, even in these crowded times as millions visit it each year. 

My 1974 postcard packs

1974 was actually a great travel year for me: to Milan for a week in April, and also several trips to France, where my oldest friend was now married and living in Paris, we took a motor-caravan there and I remember making tea as we parked outside the Louvre, and then on to those marvellous places in Northern France: Chartres Cathedral, the perfect town of Honfleur, Deauville with its boadwalks right out of UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME ...

 St Malo, Dinard, and on to the Mont, stopping off for delicious meals at traditional auberges, and shopping at charcuteries, boulangeries and patissieries, and also detouring to see the Bayeux Tapestry and the Normandy beaches of WWII. Another of my oldest friends, Les - now in Hastings - was on that trip, we will have to talk about when meeting up over the weekend, and Mike, my Parisian friend, is now in San Francisco, whom I am emailing later .... There was also a terrific weekend, or two, at that delightful town Le Touquet - I remember a particuarly fantastic restaurant meal there with those langoustines and an unforgettable strawberry flan, and a late night walk on the beach, and that balcony view ....

In Corfu, I particularly liked the Achilleon, now the island's Casino, but it was a holiday home for Sissi, Empress Elizabeth of Austria, and one could visit her private chapel and state rooms, and those splendid statutes of Achilles in the lush grounds. I have covered Rhodes and Lindos here before, travel label, we are planning to return there this year ...

There is a wonderful early '60s French film AMEILIE, OU LE TEMPS D'AIMER by Michel Drach, which I saw in 1964 and it seems unavailable now, a brooding Victorian romance set around the Mont and Normandy, where visiting Jean Sorel sets the local girls a flutter - Marie-Jose Nat, Sophie Daumier, Clothilde Joano.  It might turn up again sometime ...