Advertisement
Published: August 12th 2007
Edit Blog Post
The 'Fairy Tale' Castle
It's not actually a castle, it's Mont St Michel but it still looked amazing... Since Paris we have driven west to the D-Day Beaches then through the south of France and into Spain. We have decided that rather than going into Madrid we will see Barcelona instead on the way back up the south coast.
The D-Day beaches were incredible to see and feel. It was freezing cold and a bit drizzly so it set the mood for wandering through the war cemetaries. The cemetaries of the Brittish and Canadians were the most interesting as each headstone is personalised with a message from the family rather than just a name and rank. They also have more flowers and garden beds whereas the American cemetary at Omaha beach was just a mass of white crosses in immacualte green lawns. We had planned to see a museum or two but the free visitors centre at the American cemetary was so in depth. There were movies and timelines and artefacts like hats and medals and books and toys and it gave us enough of the story to then go wandering down to Omaha Beach. We stopped at Arramanches where there a pre-fabricated port was towed in pieces from England and setup as a temporary port during the
Segovian's Aquaduct
From Roman times, still standing and running impressively straight through the old town... critical early days of the landings. Some of it is still there today. It was low tide so we were able to walk down to some of the washed up blocks. We also went to Point La-Hock where there were some amazing ruins of bunkers and heaps of craters where the allies had bombed heavily before Army Rangers scaled the (prevousily thought to be unscaleable) cliffs to take over the peninsular, thus opening up the beaches for the landings.
Mont-St-Michael was next on our agenda and it was amazing. We parked the van in a free car park filled with campervans and felt a little cheap with all the mobile homes surrounding us. Most of them even had satelites up top! We wandered down to the castle and it's just like a fairy tale castle. It´s a bunch of rocks that a little village was built on amidst a vast swamp land that fills with water twice a day. We were lucky enough to see the tide coming in which actually travels down one of the rivers as a single rolling wave about 20cm high! We were on the banks of the river and a little nervous but we
St Sebastian Beach
We finally found some striped beach tents!!! were able to watch just how fast the tide comes in. We went back the next day in the morning and saw what high tide was like and had to walk along a boardwalk over the water to get in the front gates. Unfortunately that's where we lost Lew's phone. Last we knew it was in his pocket so we don't know whether it fell out or was pinched but we didn't hear it fall out. Luckily it was locked so we didn't have to worry about racking up a huge bill.
We then headed further south to a town called Caberton and found a lovely beach for a swim which was so refreshing as it was SO HOT!!! We were planning to get to Barritz which supposedly has the striped beach changerooms along it but it just became too difficult to navigate with our zoomed out atlas map of Europe. We decided we'd find another beach in Spain the next day.
On our way the next day we drove past so many people wearing white with red scarves around their necks. It might just be a sunday thing or it might have been a festival but we
American Cemetary, Omaha Beach
It was obvious from the rows and rows of crosses located just up from Omaha beach that a pretty intense battle raged here... didn't find anyone we could ask. We did get a brochure for bull fighting though so that must have been it. Crossing the border was quite an anticlimax actually. We crossed over a bridge and Lew spotted a tiny grafitied sign that said "Espaniol". Tada!!! We're now in Spain.
St Sebastian was a nightmare to drive in (lucky Lew was driving and I was navigating). We only stayed long enough to visit the beach (which did have striped blue and white tents to change in) and get drenched by a rouge wave while walking around the rocks to the next beach. No need to go for another swim, we stripped off and layed out our clothes to dry. Lovely just to relax for a while but not much sun so our clothes did not dry. Never mind, we drove on and camped the night in a picnic rest stop and cooked a pasta stir-through in the back of the van due to the weather.
Today we made it to Sergovia where there is an incredible aquaduct running through the city. Apparently it was built without any mortar at all! We think that might be why it's still standing
Two grubs...
The aftermark of some tasty spag bol... as the stones blocks would have had to be perfect. We've also found this internet cafe but the owner managed to lose some of our photos while copying them for us. All our photos from today so we'll have to get back out there and take some more of this aqueduct.
We are heading down to Sevilla tomorrow where we will spend a few nights and hopefully see some Fleminco and maybe a bull fight.
Hope you're all well. Will try to update again soon.
Lew and Holly
Advertisement
Tot: 0.077s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 12; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0325s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb