This prosperous looking town used, at one time, to have
a large English colony, but it has recently dwindled to such small
dimensions that the English chaplain has an exceedingly small parish. The
streets seem to possess a wonderful cleanliness; all the old houses appear
to have made way for modern buildings which, in a way, give Avranches the
aspect of a watering-place, but its proximity to the sea is more apparent
in a map than when one is actually in the town. On one side of the great
place in front of the church of Notre Dame des Champs is the Jardin des
Plantes. To pass from the blazing sunshine and loose gravel, to the dense
green shade of the trees in this delightful retreat is a pleasure that can
be best appreciated on a hot afternoon in summer. The shade, however, and
the beds of flowers are not the only attractions of these gardens. Their
greatest charm is the wonderful view over the shining sands and the
glistening waters of the rivers See and Selune that, at low tide, take
their serpentine courses over the delicately tinted waste of sand that
occupies St Michael's Bay. Out beyond the little wooded promontory that
protects the mouth of the See, lies Mont St Michel, a fretted silhouette of
flat pearly grey, and a little to the north is Tombelaine, a less
pretentious islet in this fairyland sea.
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