Normandy Landing Beaches

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Our last stop off in France before returning home was to visit the D-day landing beaches in Normandy. We based ourselves in Bayeux for three nights doing the war tour one day, and a day trip to Mont St Michel a second day.

Bayeux was a lovely little town with a massive cathedral, and well set up to cater for the American tourists. We arrived at the little train station and found no taxis around so started to walk towards our hotel (less than one kilometre away – but we now have numerous heavy bags). Before we got far we noticed a small pub with the Tour de France playing so we stopped to have a drink and watch it. We’d been following progress live via internet on the train and it was in the last ten minutes and a cliff hanger finish to see if Voeckler would hold onto the yellow jersey. (We were hoping to get to the hotel in time to see the finish). It was quite fun watching it with all the locals especially when the French guy Voeckler held on to the lead by 15 seconds. Once it had all finished we noticed that a lot of the patrons were in fact the taxi drivers so they were more than happy to take us to our hotel then.

The small tour we did of the war sites was good. There were only us and an American family of three and an interesting young French guide. We first visited the remains of the German bunkers and guns at Point Du hoc. They were fairly intact considering how long they’re been out in the open air. With the guide telling us how it all worked and their strategies etc, it was easy to envision with the structures we saw. The land around was a moonscape of craters. We then moved on to Omaha beach. It was harder to imagine this as it was on D-day as there were very few remains and today was a lovely huge golden sand beach being enjoyed by the locals. The guide had heaps of pictures of the temporary ports, german defenses on the beach, and other activity around that day, and we’d watched Saving Private Ryan the previous night in the hotel, so we got a fair idea of it from all that. We then moved on to the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach. It was spectacularly maintained with every patch of grass, every edge perfect. We were amazed that all the headstone crosses were really thick solid marble. The number is quite overwhelming with almost 10,000 buried there, and then the memorial for the 1000 missing.

We also visited the war museum in Bayeux and the British (and commonwealth) cemetery, and the memorial to reporters who had died while covering wars – up until the current day. The number of names just with the reporters is quite amazing. With all we learnt on our tour and at the museum, we are all experts on the D-day landings and the war in Northern France. We didn’t visit the ‘famous’ Bayeux tapestry (because we’d never heard of it before, and saw enough pictures of it around the town to understand what it was all about) – probably much to the disgust of the locals and other tourists.

Our day trip to Mont St Michel (Frances second most visited monument after the Eiffel tower) was interesting. I think it is most impressive from a distance than actually on it – a bit like Carcassonne. Its an island with fortress walls at the bottom, a little village built into the banks of the hill above that, then topped with the abbey and steeple. In recent years – well the last century at least I think, they have built a causeway out to access it (and a car park for all the tourists). Other than that it is surrounded by tidal waters, or quicksand at low tide. The tide moves really fast (the fastest in Europe) and goes out 16km. It was out while we were there and there were a number of groups (with tour guides), including pilgrims out on the safe bits of sand. There were even some crazy people testing how far they could sink into the quicksand around the edges, which was amusing to watch. We had a very chatty interesting lady drive us (and a young Australian backpacker) there and back (1.5 hours each way). She was supposed to just be the shuttle driver but turned out to be an excellent guide telling us all sorts of interesting local things the whole way. The village on the island was only tourist shops and restaurants, but apparently 32 people do live there.

It was sad leaving Bayeux as that was the last of France for us. We decided to head back to London a few days early as the girls still had money left that they felt was best spent there. We travelled through Paris and did contemplate staying the day to watch the finish of the Tour de France, but decided we’d see more by arriving at Rhondas in time to watch the finish on TV.

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