When you're invading a country, you need to establish base camp immediately. We plumped for Le Castel, a Napoleon III château which looked like Captain Haddock's ancestral home, if slightly smaller. During the war, German officers were billeted here and the Gestapo headquarters were down the road. These days Burmese cats in jewelled collars pose decoratively on its croquet lawn until chased off by the neighbouring farm's
Labrador puppy.
Le Castel is strategically positioned to take in the Bayeaux Tapestry, Second World War landing beaches and Mont St Michel, which were our primary objectives. Mont St Michel rises from a flat horizon like a mirage. Successive abbeys have been built on the small island's pinnacle since 460AD. They tower over the tiny fortified town beneath, which has just 41 inhabitants but has successfully repulsed many British attempts to invade, although it's in danger of succumbing to the latest wave of tourists. It is a hot, dusty clamber from sea level to the cathedral complex, but the sweeping views and vertiginous drops from the battlements are spectacular, as are the huge, vaulted, colonnaded rooms with fireplaces large enough to roast several oxen, called 'The Knights' Hall' or 'The Monks' Walk'. Visitors climb up and down spiral staircases, wander through cool cloisters and are finally ejected from this maze back on to the medieval streets below.
We had arrived early enough to park near the island, though the car park for this, the most visited tourist attraction in France apart from the Eiffel Tower, stretches almost as far as the eye can see. But by midday the streets were seething, the temperature rising and tempers fraying. I even saw a scuffle break out when one angry sightseer tripped over a dog's lead. But this island has seen plenty worse skirmishes in its battle-scarred history and we escaped unscathed.
The beaches around Mont St Michel are no one's first choice for sandcastles, particularly as there's an alligator farm nearby, so we headed along the coast to St Malo. Behind its 15th-century stone walls, this Breton town was a ferocious pirate stronghold for 300 years. When we arrived, it was cloaked in sea mist and chilly after the heat on Mont St Michel. Small children march on their stomachs and after their efforts climbing up and down the hundreds of stairs, our three-year-old and two-year-old were weepy and clamouring for food. We dived into a crêperie (the locals seem to survive on crêpes, chips and cider; no wonder France has an obesity problem) and gave them their rations, while outside the sky cleared and St Malo revealed itself to be a strange but beguiling combination of fortified town and bucket-and-spade beach. At the foot of the ramparts are flat expanses of sand dotted with shells and seaweed, rockpools and a lido. We made sandcastles, drew a giant mermaid on the strand and decorated her crown with shells, while my husband sketched a giant map of the D-day landings in sand. I wonder what the seagulls made of it.