Guardians

Saint-Malo is a rocky island surrounded by a large beach of shifting sands and salt-marshes. Over the centuries the river has been dredged and canalised and the marsh drained and filled in, and the main east-west beach has had a large sea-wall built into it which has created a long promenade and connected the walled town to the mainland by an artificial causeway that's permanently dry. Many people are not aware that the three historic settlements of the modern town were originally isolated from each other by water, and that Saint-Malo itself is actually an island.

The beaches here also have some of the highest tidal ranges in the world and the channel acts as a funnel, so the big seasonal tides can be very big, and if there is rough weather at the same time then the sea will crash over the sea wall, across the promenade and smash into the buildings on the seafront on their second and third stories... There are drone camera videos of storms in Saint-Malo and well worth watching if you want to see dramatic...

To try to stop the waves moving the sand and slow their crash into the seawalls, one of the defining features of Saint-Mao are the huge number of tree trunks set into the sand all along the beachfront. Today's blip are some at the far end of the main beach where we took the fluffy one for his weekend beach walk. He had a great time running, sniffing and digging in the wet sand. He wasn't impressed by the beach defences, though he did pee on them!