The bishop who ignored an archangel

Here is my favourite thing about Mont-Saint-Michel, and it has nothing to do with the tides. Back in 708, the story says the Archangel Michael appeared in a dream to Aubert, the local bishop, and asked him to build a church on the rock. Aubert decided he had dreamt it and got on with his day. Michael came back. Aubert still wasn't sure. So on the third go, the archangel simply reached down and burned a hole in the sleeping bishop's skull with his finger.

The wonderful, slightly ghoulish detail is that the skull still exists, and you can see it in Avranches, with a round hole in it that pilgrims have pointed at for centuries as proof. Make of it what you will. Either way the abbey got built, perched on its island, and for a thousand years people have walked out across the sand to reach it, timing their crossing against a tide that comes in, they say, as fast as a galloping horse.

I painted it in watercolour and ink, the abbey rising out of the wet sand at low tide. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Mont-Saint-Michel, Normandy · Travel Poster