The walls

The circuit

Half an hour at a reasonable pace, and most people take an hour and a half because they keep stopping. The sea side is the exposed side and is closed in a serious storm; the signs that close it are taken seriously and should be.

The tide

The range here is among the largest in Europe and reaches about thirteen metres on a big spring. That is not a statistic; it changes what the place is twice a day. At low water you can walk to the Grand Bé and to the Petit Bé beyond it. At high water you cannot, and people are cut off on them every single year. The tide table is pinned in the hall and the times on it are correct.

On foot from the door

• Grande Porte – three minutes. The main gate, with the two round towers.
• Rampart, sea side – five minutes. Go up at the Bastion de la Hollande.
• The Grand Bé – twelve minutes plus the causeway, which exists for about five hours around each low water.
• The fish quay – six minutes, outside the Porte de Dinan.
• Plage du Sillon – ten minutes north east, and three kilometres of sand after that.

Seasons

July and August are busy: the walls are crowded by eleven in the morning and the town has about ten times its winter population. May, June and September are the good months. Winter is grey, loud, often spectacular, and the restaurants that stay open are the ones worth eating in anyway.

Getting here

Saint-Malo station is twenty-five minutes on foot or eight by bus, with direct trains from Paris Montparnasse in just over two and a half hours. Ferries from Portsmouth and from Jersey arrive at the Gare Maritime, twelve minutes away. Dinard airport is twelve kilometres and Rennes is seventy.

The street

Four metres wide, granite on both sides, and no vehicle larger than a delivery van has been down it since 1954. It is quiet from about eleven at night until the bakery opens. In August it is not quiet at all between six and eleven in the evening, which is as it should be.