Walk barefoot across the seabed to Mont-Saint-Michel

At low tide the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel drains, and the floor of the sea between the Normandy shore and the abbey on its rock becomes something that can be walked across. Not alone: the crossing goes with a guide who holds the prefecture's certificate for the bay.

It starts on the beach at Genêts, where the shoes come off and stay off. About seven kilometers and three and a half hours, flat the whole way, past the islet of Tombelaine. Flat is not the same as easy. The ground is mud, ribbed sand that gives a little underfoot, and river channels where the water reaches the thighs.

Halfway, the guide stops at a patch of quicksand and shows, safely, what it does. The Mount gets steadily bigger, and the walk ends at its foot. By evening the tide is coming back over the sand just crossed.

The tide in the bay rises and falls around fourteen meters, which is why the floor is there to walk on at all. Pilgrims crossed to the Mount this way in the Middle Ages.