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Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

It might be more honest and less surprising for the title to read:

"Offshore path through tidal flats has killed 100+ people"

I also recall another similar place in France where the path has small artificial posts/concrete piers built so that anyone caught out can climb to safety.

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The one in France is the causeway to Noirmoutier island. It's a two way road that is impassable at high tide. At both ends, prominent panels display warnings, the current time and the time of the next high tide. Still, there are regular occurences of people that lose their cars and have to be rescued from the shelter poles, and, very rarely, worse.

Incidentally, it's about the same length as this 3 mile path, 4.2 km.

https://www.ile-noirmoutier.com/en/gois-passage.html

The article's assertion that it's unique in the world is misleading. There are many tidal causeways. I've personally driven across one in Northumberland that connects the mainland to an old monastic island.

Does it say it is unique? In any case, the path/track in the article is no causeway. Tidal causeways are indeed found in many places but this is a bit different. Causeways tend to go somewhere. This just a safe path through the flats.

That’s lindisfarm, there’s also st Michaels mount.

This path looks more like the rights of way over Morecambe bay though.

The Tour de France used this road in 1999 with predictable results: lots of crashes (https://www.procyclinguk.com/flashback-1999-tour-de-france/)

It's like the Tour de France's shtick is to be a giant hazing ritual where ex-racers find new ways to torment current racers.

In 1909, they sent them up the Pyrenées mountains to be attacked by bears.

France also used to have Mont-Saint-Michel, but that one is no more.

To be clear: the tidal island still exists. But it's been connected by a bridge to the mainland since 2014, supertides excepted.

At the risk of taking this even further off topic: It very much still exists, and I'd recommend against visiting while the pandemic lasts.

We went by, on holiday, a few weeks ago and the authorities simply crammed the entire place full of tourists. It felt like a BLM protest without angry people: every square meter had at least 5 people on it. Corona? Haha! Tourism income please. We ran away minutes after arriving.

Coming from NL, where authorities allowing that kind of madness would be front page news, this really baffled me. It seems that the French think that as long as you wear a face mask, nothing else matters.

I had just blindly assumed that the local authorities would limit parking (it's in the middle of nowhere, pretty much unreachable except by bus or car), or do some sort of reservation system, so tourist counts would be limited and people could keep their distance. Instead, the only sign of government presence were the four heavily armed police officers at the entrance, and they didn't give a damn either.

That said, just like looking at Paris from atop the Eiffel tower is a bad look because, well, no Eiffel tower, the Mont-Saint-Michel is best enjoyed from a distance. So maybe we didn't really miss anything except an overpriced crêpe-au-chocolat.

Mont-Saint-Michel recently stopped existing??

Stolen by a tourist who wanted something quaint to bring home.

Did you see the tidal causeway at Mont St Michel?

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont-Saint-Michel: “converted into a raised causeway in 1879“

Really? I'm went over that causeway a few years ago - what happened?

No, the causeway is there. His point is that it didn't used to be. It used to be a path that would vanish beneath rising tides daily, just like the one described in this post.

Ah right, I remember reading about it because it was in the news for trying to block off the island from all coronavirus city-leavers.

There's also a path through tidal flats to the island of Lindisfarne in extreme Northeast England. (There's also a causeway for cars although that is covered at high tide as well.) People do need to get rescued every now and then.

It's a great trip, but you need to time your visit to the tides or you'll regret it. My wife studied Old Germanic languages, so a visit to Holy Isle was a must-do. We stayed in a nearby inn so we could leave when the tide was running out.

If you're in the north-east of England it's absolutely a wonderful thing to do.

Lindisfarne was the beginning of a long distance walk on St. Oswald's Way connecting to a section of Hadrian's Wall. Fascinating part of the country although the section from the mainland from Lindisfarne back to the coast is one of the less interesting.

We just walked along the causeway. The timing with the tides was a bit tight when we were there and it made more sense to take the more straightforward route although it wasn't as "authentic" as taking the path through the tidal flats.

Your proposed title isn't click-baity enough.

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