Mont St Michel/ Tour de France

Eileen, if you are lucky enough to get within an hour of the stage this late , consider yourself lucky!! As soon as the stages were announced in October, we tried to get lodging near L'Alpe Duez, the best we could do was 90 minutes away. That morning Lodging in Grenoble was wide open, by 2 pm that afternoon, the whole city was booked. I searched, and I searched in the tiniest of villages, no B&B's. Thats when I realized that the "TDF" was so popular that one man(Lance Armstrong) could not bring it down nor was doping going to bring it down. Have you considered staying in the Normandy beach area? I could use some "pointers" from you or anyone viewing this posting regarding tips on where to park near L'Alpe Duez and walking to the summit. Good Luck!!

You're asking for wild guesses unless you stumble across somebody's who's been there before - - and then you'll be getting only anecdotal history. Here's mine: No. I'm betting the trains from Rennes (or anywhere else) to Pontorson are going to be full with people trying the same thing. I'm betting the buses that run from the train station down to the Mont will be equally full. I'm betting that you don't want to walk those last five or six miles if you can't catch a bus. I'm betting that's there's a slim chance of catching a taxi. There's an off chance that maybe you could rent a car and worm into the little roads in the fields to the west of the causeway/bridge access and only have to walk a couple of miles. The problem would be that, if you parked, you'd block the road (or not be able to get very far because somebody else pulled the same stunt). So much for directly around the Mont. I know the area pretty well, but had no idea of the exact route until I looked at this map (http://www.bikemap.net/route/1879658#lat=48.642804257739&lng=-1.4022&zoom=12&maptype=ts_terrain.) I'd think the roads directly along the coast would have the same problems as those discussed about the fields, even if you could get close. With a car, you might be able to see something from either around Ducey or Saint-Quentin. But that's a wild guess as well.

Thanks for your interest and insights into my query. I was searching the net last night and I lucked into a small gites located in Servon through Tripadvisor/Flipkey. Servon is less than 8 km from Mont St Michel which gives us the option to just hoof it to Mont St Michel.

Looks like luck is on your side! Good work. I guess, timing is everything!

Miracles never cease. Well done. It would have been nice, however, had you done this before my skull exploded from all the thinking.