Sleep on Mont-Saint-Michel after the crowds go home

Mont-Saint-Michel is a tidal island off the Normandy coast, a village around the foot of a rock with an abbey on top. Millions of people visit it. Twenty-three live there.

On this trip the way in is on foot, across the bay at low tide, and the night is spent on the island itself, inside the walls.

The day visitors leave in the evening, and by then the tide is coming back over the sand that was walked across that morning. The next morning the abbey comes first, at opening, while the top of the Mount is still quiet.

The figure of twenty-three residents is the census of 2023. Visitor counts disagree, from about two and a half million a year to more than three million, which is why this page says only millions.