Historical Normandy

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Hi all,

Since the last entry we have been on an historical journey around Normandy, Tues 24th Aug we made our way to Bayeux to see the famous tapestry (which I did learn about at school)! for those of you that don't know it tells the story of how William the bastard (later to become William the Conquerer and king of England) was promised the throne by Edward the Confessor but as we know Harold jumped in instead and crowned himself king so a not very happy William set of from Normandy to England and killed Harold at the battle of Hastings in 1066 (first history lesson over), it was really quite interesting (not often you say that about a piece of 1000 year old cloth is it). The town of Bayeux is also worth a walk around, nice ice creams.

Next on the list Wed 25th Aug was Arromanche and the site of the Mulberry harbour build during the D Day landings on 6th June 1944. This place has as many union jacks as it does tricolors flying as the people in this area really celebrate the landings in a big way. We visited a 360 cinema which showed the story of the landings, sometimes in very graphic detail (someone fainted!!) and we visited the D Day landings museum itself with models of how the Mulberry harbour was transported across the channel and built, plus from the views out of the windows you can see some of the remaining pieces left in the bay. There was a lot of info about how the brits stormed up GOLD beach on D day and into Arromanche itself but the main focus was on the harbour, the facts and figures of how they built it is unbelievable (it takes us 2 years to install a few pipes at work, it took them lot 2 weeks to build a full working harbour the size of Dover)! (2nd history lesson over).

Thur 26th Aug driving via the very nice walled town of St Lo in the Manche region of Normandy we stayed overnight at a small town called Villedieu Les Poeles, it's famous for it's antique shops (very Pickering NYM) and something to do with a lot of pigs...no sure what.

Fri 27th Aug - we headed further south west and to the campsite at Courtils, this campsite was great, a nice pool, loads of play areas, table tennis, boules etc etc and it was scorching hot for all 4 days we stayed. The main reason we stayed here was that the site was less than 10km from Le Mont Saint Michel the famous rock that sits on it's own in the bay and can be seen for miles or kilometres if your european. We cycled the short distance there on the Sunday, you can see the rock getting larger and larger across the grassy flats as you round every corner and before long we rode up the causeway that leads to the entrance of the rock, quite a sight and it's much bigger than you think. We spent the day walking through the narrow streets through the tacky gift shops and up the rock and into the Abbey. At the top you look back to land and south across Normandy for miles, now the history of this place is another story..........ok enough history I won't bore you anymore. Definately a place to visit tho if you are ever passing this way. After sunning ourselves all day on Monday, Tuesday was time to depart.

Tues 31st Aug - As we have the site booked in Paris for Friday 3rd Sept we had to make our way back east across lower Normandy and in the general direction of western Paris, so I picked another historical place to stay. This time it was Falaise which was the home to non other than William the bastard....him again, he's big round these parts. After a fairly long drive by our standards, a shop at Le Clercs (Frances Tescos) and a Mcdonalds (yes very cultural I know) we got to the campsite which is at the bottom of the rock that Williams old house stands on, the site was almost empty and after speaking in my near perfect French to the campsite owner he told me that all the french are back at school and work on Wednesday so we practically had the place to ourselves.

Wed 1st Sept - September already. Today (as I type it's 8:45pm) we went to visit Williams place and again the museum receptionist told us that we and 3 others (all brits) were the only people in, on Sunday he'd had 250 visitors in, so I guess it's going to be a bit quiet from now on in France. Another very good and simple museum telling the story of each room in the castle and how William grew up and ended up being the king of England.

Right bang up to date, one thing to report, Daniel (my 16 year old) got his GCSE results at the weekend and he passed them all except Spanish so we think he got 12 passes in all, that means 2 things, it will now cost me a small fortune when I get home as I gave him an insentive to pass as many exams as possible and now I will have to also learn Spanish as he's obviously useless at it!!!

Bye for now
Take care
Neil Dan and Harry
x

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