You also have to wait for low tide to access Grand Bé, another islet a few strides from the ramparts.

In the Second World War rocky little islands such as this became a useful spot location for German gun emplacements.

When the Americans liberated Saint-Malo Grand Bé fell quickly, but it was weeks before the Alet peninsula at the mouth of the Rance River would surrender.

Many come to Grand Bé to pay their respects to the romantic writer Chateaubriand, whose grave faces the sea as he had requested 20 years before he died.