About Saint-Malo Guide

A Saint-Malo local, passionate about this coast and this city, I built this site to gather in one place everything that helps you make the most of Saint-Malo: the spring tide calendar, the best places to experience the big tides, and the right addresses for sleeping facing the sea — at the right moment.

Here, the sea is no extra in the background: it rises more than twelve metres on the big coefficients, it empties the bay twice a day, and on some equinox evenings it leaps clean over the Sillon sea wall. Book a room without looking at the calendar and you miss the show — or pay for a "sea view" on a neap-tide weekend. The information existed, but scattered: tide times in one place, coefficients in another, accommodation somewhere else. This guide connects them.

What you will find here

The full spring tide calendar, a home-made index that estimates whether "the sea will leap the wall" as each episode approaches, amap of the bay with observation spots, beaches and low-tide islands, and hand-picked addresses — from the hotel set on the sea wall to the campsite overlooking the Rance — chosen for one thing: what they offer when the sea decides to perform.

How I choose the addresses

One criterion above all: what the address is worth with respect to the tide. Distance to the sea wall, which way the rooms face, what you see at high water, how quiet it is at low tide. I add diversity — every neighbourhood, every budget — and one simple rule: establishments do not pay to be listed, are not notified, and the "Hotel website" links earn me nothing.

Another rule, just as simple: I do not claim to have slept in every room. What I publish is checked against records — official websites (verified weekly), public data, maps — and when something cannot be verified, it is left out. If you spot a mistake,write to me: I fix things quickly.

My sources

Tide times come only from the official SHOM widget — never copied out. Dates and coefficients are aligned with the Saint-Malo tourist office, swell and wind with Météo-France, the map with OpenStreetMap, and events with official sources (the city, the Route du Rhum organiser). When a piece of data is missing, I prefer an honest gap to an invented value.

What this site is not

I am neither SHOM, nor the tourist office, nor a rescue service. The bay is magnificent and unforgiving: before any outing on the foreshore or to the tidal islands, only the official tide times and local guidance are authoritative. Where this site and an official source disagree, the official source is right — and an email lets me fix it.

How the site makes a living

Some activities and excursions link to GetYourGuide: book through those links and I earn a commission, at no extra cost to you — and every page concerned says so before the first such link. Accommodation recommendations earn me nothing. No advertising, no sponsored content, no third-party cookies. The rest is in the legal noticeand the privacy policy — including why I publish without giving my name, as French law allows.

The site has been online since July 2026. Enjoy the tides.