Brittany

Brittany — Bretagne in French — occupies the western tip of France between the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel. The tide here is one of the largest in Europe and the absolute largest in continental France. Mean range at Saint-Malo on the north coast is about 7.9 metres, climbing past 12 metres on the largest equinoctial spring tides — only the Bay of Fundy and a handful of estuaries elsewhere run bigger swings. The pattern is cleanly semidiurnal across the whole coast. The Mont-Saint-Michel approaches and the Bay of Saint-Malo amplify the open-Atlantic signal through the funnel geometry of the gulf. Down the west coast at Brest the range drops to about 4.9 metres on springs; further south at La Rochelle and the Vendée coast the signal is smaller again. The 'grandes marées' tradition is real here — the Service Hydrographique calendar lists each year's largest spring tides well in advance, and coastal fishing villages organise pêche à pied harvests around them. SHOM (Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine) is the authoritative French tide source.