Crowds almost ruin Mont Saint-Michel; here's how to beat them

It's a sad irony of tourism: Our visits often kill the charm we seek.

I've written about his before.  Crowds made my last visit to Versailles more chore than pleasure.  Florence is getting ever harder to love as the tourist throng makes it resemble DisneyWorld at school holidays. Taormina is only bearable if you can stay after the cruise ship crowds depart.  Sadly, I can now add Mount Saint-Michel to my list of magnificent sites nearly destroyed by the shoulder-to-shoulder throng of people crowding in to see them.

The fortified abbey, spiralling upwards on a tiny island off the Normandy coast to a majestic pinnacle
of Gothic glory, is as magnificently beautiful as I expected.  But taking in that beauty requires hard work: an ability to queue patiently, to shuffle en masse, to ignore screaming children and sullen teenagers dragged along by adults ignoring them, and to use your imagination to screen out the masses to focus on the architecture and the story it tells.

That story goes back to the 8th century, but most of what you see today is high gothic.  Stout walls dotted with picturesque guard towers encircle the complex.  A narrow lane with crazily-leaning Medieval houses climbs steeply upwards.  Focus on the architecture, and the Medieval-style shop signs, while ignoring the occupants.  The way is lined with shops flogging low-quality tourist tat, and overpriced creperies with menus offering photos of the food with labels in six languages. Eventually the secular buildings fall away and the path turns back on itself to become an open, processional stair into the abbey complex.  Up and up you climb, pausing near the grand visitor's entrance gate to purchase tickets before you climb again, the equivalent of another four or five stories before you finally reach the church at the peak.  The views are, of course, spectacular.

Mont Saint-Michel's location is one of the things that makes it so memorable.  Its island stands in miles of tidal sands.  Moist, glistening and accessible at low tide, isolated at sea when the tide comes in (though a modern causeway now links it to the mainland).  The surrounding countryside is salt marsh, mostly given over to the sheep whose grazing here makes them particularly tasty.  Planners have done a fine job screening the car parks and the village of hotels on the mainland with a stand of trees, so the view outwards leaves the Mont in pastoral isolation.

You'll find nothing close to isolation on the island itself, however, though if you tour the abbey close to closing time things improve.  I spent the extra money on the audio tour, which I'd consider an essential factor in making sense of what is now, basically, an empty series of buildings.  Even the Mont, iconic symbol of French power (it never fell during the 100 Years' War), was stripped of its treasures and glory at the revolution.  It reached its nadir in the 19th century when it was a prison.  Today, a religious order has moved back in, but the church is an austere shell far more impressive from the outside.  The more striking sights come after, when the tourist route spirals you back down the Mont through the rest of the facilities that once made the abbey work.

The cloister is extraordinary.  Its double row of highly-ornamented gothic arches would be a star sight on its own, but pales before the stunning prospect of a massive window at one end, six stories above ground, taking in the sweeping view.  (Any Game of Thrones fan will immediately think of The Eyrie.)  The monks refectory has a sweeping grace that bestows a sense of peace, even when you're sharing it with scores of others.  The double fireplaces and majestic groin vaulting in the principle

guest hall make it clear just how prominent the visitors once were.  My favourite space was probably the last: the majestic knight's hall, entered from the top so you're at eye level with the fantastically-carved capitals of the forest of columns there.  It no doubt helped that it was approaching closing time and I had a few moments almost alone in this humbling space.

Suspecting the crowd problem, I'd followed the strategy that worked so well for me in Taormina and booked a hotel on the island.  This was a partial success.  It's indeed possible to reclaim some of the charm of the place if you're here after the abbey closes.  You can walk along windswept, romantic ramparts and, once the shutters come down, see the beauty beyond the tourist tat in the main street.  Sitting quietly as dusk falls, watching the shadows shift and the lights come up on the abbey above you is spectacular.

But there aren't many hotels on the island, and those that are charge according to their captive market.    Our room at La Croix Blanche was pleasant enough.  Well decorated and comfortable, if we leaned out one of our two windows we could see the abbey looming to the left and the estuary below to the right.  It was also oddly shaped (a long, very narrow rectangle), four flights up a treacherous spiral staircase and as expensive as a good hotel in London.  All inevitable, I suppose, for accommodation wedged into Medieval buildings inside one of the world's top tourist attractions.  Like each of the small handful of hotels on the island, La Croix Blanche has no real lobby or lounging space outside the bedrooms.  Clearly, the food and drink revenues made from passing tourists deserve all the floor space.

Trip Advisor made it clear, however, that dining was to be avoided at our hotel.  Its rotten reviews were matched by the write-ups on most of the dining spots here.  This is the kind of place where the assumption that they'll never see you again allows kitchens to turn out poor quality at high prices.  We looked in a lot of windows before settling on the restaurant at the Hotel du Guesclin, where the local lamb formed the centrepiece of a solid, if pricey, meal with a lovely view of dusk over the estuary.

Lingering on the island is a way to capture a bit of the magic that the crowds leech away.  But there is a way to have the experience without the crazy prices.  The village of hotels just across the causeway is next to the car parks and linked to the island by shuttle buses from 8 in the morning until 11:30 at night.  Plan your visit so you enter the abbey about two hours before it closes.  Linger, and make the most of the last hour in the building when the crowds thin out.  Stroll the ramparts before settling in to dinner at Guesclin, then take the shuttle back to a less expensive, more comfortable hotel on the mainland.  There, you'll have the benefit of the view of the entire complex from across the estuary, which is actually the most impressive of all.