Steve and Mark had recommended MSM as a place to visit and we’d had it on our list of must sees so we went out for the day. Unfortunately it didn’t go quite the way we expected. On arriving in the nearby town we couldn’t drive to the Mont and the sat nav led us astray so we opted to follow the signs. However, this took us to a Park and Ride. By the time we realised what was happening we were on a one way street leading to the car park. Mike found being shepherded like this a bit deceitful and objected. Ultimately we stayed and took the bus to the Mont.
The place is fairly impressive. It stands out from everything around it in every possible way. But it was very touristy, over-crowded, too many shops and, ultimately, not a nice place to be. There was a geocache we hung around but with so many people it was impossible to get even vaguely close. One of us would have had to have faked a heart attack as a distraction whilst the other grabbed it.
To top it off, the temperature was in the high 20s and the barely air-conditioned bus ride wasn’t fun. Mike doesn’t do well in such high temperatures and suffered some what. We stayed a couple of hours then headed away for some lunch.
We stopped off at a creperie serving buckwheat pancakes. I’m sure that the celiacs among us would have been over-joyed but they were decidedly average pancakes.
However, Mark had mentioned an Alligator/reptile zoo in passing and we just happened by it so spent a couple of hours happily watching snakes, lizards, alligators, tortoises, turtles and crocodiles. Still hot but more entertaining. We saw mice and rats being fed to various cold-blooded creatures, giant tortoises shagging and small children being fed to alligators. I’ll let you guess which of those is false but remember that this is France before you leap to conclusions.
