France - Day 3: Mont St Michel and Evening Activities in the Chateau Gardens.

On Wednesday, we woke early, boarding the bus and travelling to Mont St Michel, having fruit and a croissant for breakfast when we arrived there.
We then crammed onto shuttle buses, which took us all the way onto the island. Unfortunately, the buses couldn't climb the steps for us, but the nearly 200 members of our group made light work of that (living on or near Dartmoor saw to that).
Once at the summit, we learned more about the history of Mont St Michel from Mrs Underwood (who is extremely knowledgeable about Normandy). She told us how the church at the top was constructed, and that William the Conqueror was responsible for it. We just missed a church service where the monks who live on the island sing, but had time to look around the structure as we began our descent. The similarities with St Michael's Mount in Marazion were obvious and (Wikipedia tells me) the Cornish version was modelled on Mont St Michel. The French version seems much more affluent and developed than the  cousin in Cornwall.
As we reached the narrow shopping streets nearly back at ground level, there were lots of comments on how similar it is to how Diagon Alley is envisaged.
We ate some custard creams on the beach, waiting for shuttle buses, and were lucky to avoid seagull dive bombs. A-Team staff were ready for any defence needed.
Returning to the coaches we spent the predictable 30 or so minutes getting everyone through the toilet system, and then had lunch, making sure sun cream was topped up.
Splitting in to groups, we headed towards the coast to draw Mont St Michel. Mrs Underwood was on hand to share her tips on scaling the picture, and the drawings children produced were very impressive. 
When it was our turn, we headed to the Biscuit Factory, where each child was given 5 euros to spend on gifts to take home. After that, we were picked up by the coaches and returned to the Chateau for the final dinner, evening activities and night of sound sleeping before leaving the following day.