Let's See How Far we Have Come(Matchbox Twenty) - Breteuil-sur-Iton to Saint-Colombe,Normandy 11th March 2016

---

---

There was great promise today with the weather. Despite it being a little misty to start with, it didn’t take long for the clouds to part and give us sunshine, albeit a little ‘waterery’.Even the birds couldn’t resist getting out in the trees and were chirping away.

Today it was time to move on and head for the Cotentin Peninsula and our first Air BNB stay on the BBA V3.We have arranged an apartment that is part of a riding school not too far from Cherbourg which will give us opportunity to explore the Cotentin Peninsula.

It had been a relaxing stay at Breteuil-sur-Iton and it proved a good location to get over all that time in the air.

First stop today is Verneuil-sur-Avre and we found a park in the large town square which was filling up quickly with people coming in to do their shopping.

We had planned to a walking tour of this historic town that was established in 1120 and still has some very old buildings including a number of timbered houses.

First stop was the Church of Sainte-Madeleine which was started in the 12^th century. The church dominates the town square and was expanded over several stages to its current size. It wasn’t particularly worthy of any length of stay in exploring other than someone was at the organ belting out a hymn which does give one the right feeling as you mooch around to see what is what.

The walk then took us past a very large round tower which had been part of the defences and probably the most prominent piece of the original town walls left.

We walked past the Abbey Saint Nicholas (you can only spend so much time in places of religion) and onto the Notre-Dame Cathedral which while not that grand did have some very vivid stained glass windows which attracted our attention for closer inspection.

Down a street of timbered houses, one or two which looked like that were well leaning into the street and we were back to the square and on our way heading west on the D926 towards Argentan and then a more northerly direction towards Caen on N158.

Just before Argentan we passed through horse breeding country if the number of stables and neat paddocks full of horses were anything to go by.

At Le-Pin-au-Haras we took a detour looking for a monument to commemorate theWW2 Battle of the Falaise Pocket which we will mention further in a moment.

The monument turned out to be further out of our way that we wanted to be and so we returned to the town and found a sheltered location beside the very grand Chateau Le-Bourg-St-Leonard and had our first boot lunch of the BBA V3.Baguette, cheese and salami went down well followed by a delicious cream puff filled chocablock with a coffee cream. There is going to have to be be some serious exercise to keep the weight from going on if we keep this up.

Next stop was the town of Falaise which had been almost totally destroyed during the Battle of the Falaise Pocket in August 1944 when the Allies, who had become bogged down in their desire to liberate France encircled the 7^th German Army and turned around their progress towards Paris.

The battle which featured Canadian forces along with the British and American armies was a significant turning point for Allies and the Canadians took a heavy toll of casualties. Just beyond the town there is a very well maintained Commonwealth War cemetery with nearly 3000 Canadian casualties buried. According to the inscription there was also 1 New Zealander buried there and while it would have good to have found his grave and pay our respects it might have taken us a long time to find it and we had to press on.

One other notable person from Falaise can lay claim to being born there and that was William the Conqueror who was the first King of England from 1066.

While the road we had been travelling over had been very good we came onto a two laned motorway separated by a concrete wall or in parts a green space down the middle of the road. This sped up our progress to our destination and what with the ring road taking us quickly passed Caen and we were soon skirting Bayeux.

We have been to the Normandy D-Day beaches before so we kept on towards the Cotentin peninsula and our accommodation just north of Ste-Mere-Eglise, world renowned for its part in the D-Day landings and the movie ‘The Longest Day’ which featured a paratrooper getting caught up on a church spire as he came in a for a landing to commence the battle.

We passed through the town and noted that the paratrooper is still stuck on the spire. We will be back to explore the small town more during our stay.

Gina GPS took us off the main road to our accommodation and we wandered along very narrow lanes with neatly trimmed hedgerows separating paddocks until we arrived at the Air BNB reservation we had made the apartment at a farm townhouse that also doubled as a pony club.

Nadine, our host was there to greet us and showed us around the large apartment that will be our home for the next 3 nights. Everything looked perfect for us and we relaxed with a brandy and dry ginger ale (we finally found a 6 can pack at an Intermarche) before dinner and another episode of ‘Open all Hours ‘on the laptop before bed.

---

Comments

[KJ]

Singing along with you...
A great blog so far...wondering if you need a hymn book on tour to be inspired by all the churches you have seen?