Leaving Normandy


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Europe » France » Picardy » Amiens
May 10th 2015
Published: May 10th 2015
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This morning I checked out of my Bayeux hotel and hit the road. My first stop was the little seaside town of Arromanches which is in the middle of the Gold Beach, one of the beaches assigned to the British on D-Day. The Allies built an artificial harbor there that was affectionately called Port Winston. They were therefore able to land supplies even though the Germans had made the usual ports unusable. The extent of Port Winston is impressive and I could clearly see the remains of much of the old artificial breakwater (see picture). Next I visited Juno Beach which was where the Canadians landed and the Canadian military cemetery (see picture). We often forget the Canadian contribution to the war and the fact that they declared war on Germany two years before the United States did. I left the D-Day area and drove to Honfleur, which is located at the mouth of the Seine and is directly across from Le Havre. I wanted to see the latter because that is the port where my father first landed in Europe when he came here as an 18 year old in 1945. I didn't get a really good view of the cranes, etc, but they are there and you can at least see what a big river the Seine is where it empties into the English Channel (see picture). I had lunch in Honfleur and enjoyed walking around the old harbor (see picture). Then I went to see the Abbey of Jumieges, an important religious center in the Middle Ages. I had to cross the Seine to get there and here is a photo of me on the car ferry (see picture). The abbey is now just a shell, but it is an impressive shell (see picture) and one can imagine what it looked like in its prime. I am in Amiens tonight and tomorrow I intend to do some exploration of WWI sites. The Battle of the Somme took place all around Amiens in 1916.


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