Saint Malo and the Rance
The back wall of historic Saint Malo. These windows have a direct view onto the beach and sea.
Saint Malo
Beautiful Saint Malo. I’ve written about it several times on this blog. It is one of those places that is almost perfect just the way it is, and has been for hundreds of years. That is until WWII when it was completely destroyed by bombs from both sides. The city was rebuilt from the rubble between 1948 and 1960. Now it stands as it ever was.
Saint Malo is the setting for All the Light We Cannot See, a recent movie, and popular book by Anthony Doer, who was inspired when visiting the city himself. It makes such a perfect setting and of course its history is full of adventure.
When I speak of Saint Malo, I mean the ancient walled part of the city which is self-contained and without any new building. Of course the modern city is much bigger now but this walled historic section is very much set apart.
The port of Saint Malo is just below the city walls. It is an active maritime harbor with large ships departing and arriving (as well as pleasure boats of every size). When we lived in Saint Enogat during the 2020 lockdown, our Breton friend Bernard told us about a website where we could monitor the sea traffic. It was very exciting to watch as large vessels came around the point heading out to sea. We could track what the cargo was, who was aboard by name and rank, where the ship was headed and when it would reach its destination, and what the return journey would be. Watching the ships coming and going from our living room windows, binoculars in hand, was one of our favorite pastimes.
Searching for coffee on a rainy afternoon.
This trip we didn’t stay in Saint Malo proper, but as mentioned in my last blog, we did come twice, both times for lunch. One was to the famous Breizh Cafe, one of our favorites. They specialize in galettes made from sarrasin (buckwheat flour). When James lived in Brittany, he got a taste for galettes and brought us all the tools needed to make our own. We often make a dinner of them, but ours do not match theirs, so after lunch Rick went into the associated boutique to buy some flour and got an extended tutorial on how best to make them. It’s not as straightforward as we had suspected. There is an international school in Saint Malo that can teach you the techniques required to realize a real Breton galette. Rick did give it a try earlier in this week at home. It turned out well, but not quite like what you can get at the Breizh. More refinements to be made.
Rick gets a long lesson on how to mix up batter for a galette.
One particularly nice activity, after a satisfying lunch in Saint Malo, is to take a walk around the walls, which encircle the entire old town. Stairs lead up from street level at several points. At a leisurely pace, stopping to admire the views, to walk the entire circle might take about an hour. The city sits on a peninsula that juts out into the ocean, so it is surrounded on three sides by water. There is the port de plaisance (the marina where smaller private boats are moored) on one side and the harbor where larger commercial ships are docked and ferries come and go on another.
The fortified walls of Saint Malo protected the city throughout its early history. The city was never sacked by invaders from the sea.
The port of Saint Malo serves multiple activities. It is a ferry port, a freight port, a fishing port, a well equipped shipyard, a pleasure boat port, an ocean racing port, hosting one of the most famous races in Europe. and a cruise ship port. There are docks, warehouses, terminals, dry docks and crane services, making it one of the most important ports of call in Brittany.
Its proximity to England and the Channel Islands makes it an important crossing point for freight and passengers. Two companies offer crossings between Saint Malo, Portsmouth, Poole, Jersey and Guernsey and serve 750,000 passengers a year.
A commercial port is located on the southern side which one can look down upon while circumambulating the walls.
My favorite view from the walls is at the back of the city, looking west into the channel and across the water to Dinard. There is a lovely natural seawater swimming pool, which is full of bathers during warmer weather. It is replenished with each high tide.
At low tide one can walk to two islands, the Grand and Petit Bé. The Grand Bé. the spit of land on the far right in the photo below, has no structures, while the Petit Bé has a defensive fort built during the reign of Louis XIV. I have never made the trek to explore these islands, but I would like to do so one day as I imagine the view back towards Saint Malo is particularly spectacular.
The view from the western portion of the defensive walls of Saint Malo.
Saint Malo has what I think of as rather austere lines and color. There is a uniformity to the buildings and a kind of hardness to the city’s design, and yet the overall effect is one of harmony and sympathy. It is a pleasure to spend time among these stone buildings and straight lines. The cobbled streets are made more for people than vehicles. Unlike many other European cities completely destroyed during the Second World War, such as Warsaw, Dresden, Le Havre, or even Brest, Saint Malo was rebuilt stone by stone and returned to its original character patiently, determinedly and lovingly. I also think Saint Malo retains its authenticity. Even if tourism is its major industry, the town offers much more than that to the attentive visitor.
The walk along the walls offers pleasant views out to sea and into the town itself.
The Rance
There are several communities that touch the shores of the Rance River estuary which flows into the Atlantic at Dinard.
Rick teases me for having the same reaction each time we cross the barrage (dam) over the Rance, connecting Saint Malo and Dinard. He anticipates my thrill, which can be counted upon, as this is one of my favorite views in all my world, and I exclaim my delight each time I see it. I just never seem to tire of this view; the Rance river, with its serpentine shoreline as it meets the ocean.
My traveling companions this time indulged my great attraction to this beautiful river and allowed me a pleasant detour one afternoon. We had no particular destination, I just wanted to enjoy a short drive up and down by the river’s edge.
The tidal River Rance has been much affected by the dam erected at its mouth during the 1960s. Still, it is a happy playground for sailors.
One thing we’ve learned recently from the book France, by Graham Robb, is that the bedrock of Brittany is mostly granite and schist. This simple fact has helped shape the history of the region. What the hard bedrock affords is surface water almost everywhere. This has permitted people over the centuries to eke out a living in most any corner. And they did. Bretons were historically difficult to wrangle since they could easily slip away into the hedgerows and disappear without a trace. Brittany allows, because of the availability of its life-giving water, great dispersion of peoples. Pirates and smugglers made an early living here. Rebels and hermits, foreigners and desperados were able to find a home in Brittany and quickly hightail it when necessary.
Where we live in Burgundy, the bedrock is limestone and rainwater seeps away quickly. To settle in Burgundy people needed to be near a river or spring, so they clustered together in communities near sources of water. It is much easier to subjugate a territory when you know where to find the people you are hoping to overcome! That being said, Burgundy was incorporated into France only fifty-five years before Brittany (which was 1532); Burgundy through battle, Brittany through marriage.
I love the way the river curves through the landscape. The water changes color with the weather.
Bonus Content
I have mentioned on this blog before that Saint Malo has some of the highest tides in the world. I thought I’d give you a visual on that. In the photo below, which I took in February 2020, you can see the walkway and beach below. The spire in the distance is the walled section of Saint Malo. This is a normal view of the beach when the tide is neither high nor too low.
Just outside the walled city of Saint Malo where we stayed with our grandchildren in 2020 for their winter holiday.
During the week we were visiting that year there happened to be one of the occasional giant tides I mentioned before. You can see that the sea has risen to the level of the walkway and the waves are crashing against the lip of it. This grande marée (high tide) is larger than normal but not at all the biggest. The differential is quite impressive.
This photo was taken on the same part of the walkway, facing the opposite direction.
Here’s a photo I borrowed from the internet. There are some amazing photos and videos of Saint Malo being swallowed by giant waves, if you want to follow this subject down the rabbit hole.
Note that the face of the sea wall is curved to deflect the waves.