The Longest Day Theme (The Prague Philharmonic Orchestra)A Drive to Barfleur and Omaha Beach

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frost overnight and the day looks like being another sunny one.

Today’s plan for sightseeing is to head in the opposite direction of yesterday to Barfleur and then down the coast to Utah Beach, one of the landing beaches in the D-Day invasion of 6^th June 1944,and indulge in some history of WW2.

With another hearty breakfast consumed we headed out to find the D902 towards Barfleur.

We had mentioned the narrow country lane the Pony Club is situated on and our luck so far has not to meet any opposing vehicles on it.

That luck ran out today but I skilfully negotiated Peggy as far as I could to the right and the other driver coming our way did the same and we edged past each other successfully. We should add that we were advantaged by probably the widest corner there is on the road!

The D902 is as straight as an arrow with rises and falls over the undulating country to break the monotony. Today being Sunday there is very little traffic on the road and we made good time to the pretty seaside town of Barfleur. Along the way we came to realise that the pretty small pale flowers growing wildly on the side of the road were primroses, a sure sign of spring.

The wind had got up and given the air temperature of around 9c the wind chill factor in the steady light breeze made it seem colder so we rugged ourselves up for a walking tour of the town.

The town has a well protected harbour and is home to a small number of large fishing vessels.

As part of its history it was one of the ports from which the Normans left for the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Despite the breeze, the sun shining gave the buildings around the harbour an attractive look.

St Nicolas church built in the mid 1600’s dominates the quay on the seaward side.

We took a stroll along the path behind a very solid seawall which we could tell was a very necessary breakwater to the houses on the other side of the path.

There appeared to be few of the 700 or so locals out and about in the cold wind but there were more people like us, tourists out to see the sights.

We strolled around the other side of the harbour where there were examples of the defences used by the Germans in WW2 as part of their Atlantic Wall to stop any Allied invasion.

One such structure was what may have been a ‘blockhouse’ which was a house like structure but reinforced with a considerable amount of concrete which was used as a place to store ammunitions close to other bunkers. Often these were existing houses taken over for the purposes of defence of the area. Along the beach were a couple of standard concrete bunkers.

Apart from a couple of older looking houses there was a lot of open space which gave the appearance that there may have been houses there before but perhaps they had been destroyed in the D-Day invasion and the land has never been used for housing since.

It was a little early for lunch so with the knowledge that the road south to Utah beach followed the coast we held off hoping to find a spot we could pull over and enjoy the sea vistas while having lunch.

It took a while to find the right road to take us onto the coast and we finally managed that at Quineville, a sleepy and deserted looking seaside village.

We drove down to the foreshore but found another car parked dead in the centre of what would have been a good spot to stop other than the fact we thought we didn’t want to be within a car door of them eating our lunch as it was definitely an indoor day for lunch. So we drove into an adjacent car park and Gretchen neatly reversed Peggy into a spot where we still had a view of the sea.

Driving on we came across the spot where the Allies were supposed to land as part of the D-Day invasion at Utah beach. They actually ended up nearly 2km south due to the wind and tides.

However the area is well marked as the spot where General Leclerc of the Free French forces arrived in August. There are still bunkers set in the dunes which indicate just how extensive the German defences were on this coastline.

Heading down the coast a little further to the actual landing site of the American forces we strolled around the memorials before the cold wind got the better of us and we withdrew to Peggy.

The Allies suffered only a small number of casualties at Utah beach although they did take some time to establish a beachhead inland.

We headed for home via Sainte Marie Eglise a small town about 10km inland to check out the world famous American paratrooper who ended up hung up off the spire of the church in the middle of town on the night before the D-Day invasion began on the beaches in the area. I must say that I had always thought that the story was made up for the film ‘The Longest Day’ to give the movie more drama but in fact the event did actually happen to Pvt John Steele of the 82^nd Airborne Division. Steele ‘played dead’ for 2 hours until he was captured by the Germans although he later escaped and took part in the assault on the town to liberate it.

He was made an honorary citizen of the town and today the hotel is named after him.

To this day a replica of the paratrooper hangs from the spire and is probably the most photographed paratrooper in the world!

The town also has an Airborne Museum although we decided not to take the tour around it and instead headed for home after a good day out.

Tomorrow we head for Brittany after an enjoyable stay in Normandy during which we have visited all the places we had on our wish list. If we can keep this up as we go we shall be very pleased with the outcome of the BBA V3.

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