Great nights sleep in the village an we were up to a hearty breakfast before getting back on the road headed for Bayeux. First stop was the British war cemetery just outside town. Massive cemetery and within walking distance of the British war museum. We didn’t go into the museum but we wandered around the graves for a little while.
After that we headed into Bayeux to the tapestry museum. The tapestry is 70m long and depicts William the Conqueror (nee Bastard) from when King Edward selected William as the heir to the throne, Harold stealing the thunder and declaring himself as the heir, and finally when William heads from Normandy to England to give Harold a good walloping.
From Bayeux we headed to Arromaches where the British constructed the Mulberry Harbour 24 hours after landing on 6th June 1944. Remains can still be seen of the structure floated across the channel and sunk to create the infrastructre to offload tanks and moor ships to funnel into France. Now on the site is a museum about the D-Day landings with information about all the nationalites that came ashore that day. Being the week before the anniversary of D-Day there was a bit of a build up of old army cars and bikes being driven and riden around.
After lunch, we headed west along the coast to Pointe du Hoc, which is between the 2 beaches where the Americans came ashore. It was the home of a serious battery that could easily quash soldiers on either beach. Still today, the craters in the area are massive from bombing in the hours leading up to the landings. The soldiers who scales the cliffs using grapling hooks and ladders to get to it actually found it empty. A short ride away was the American cemetery, which was even bigger than the British one we had seen earlier in the day.
About 5pm we got to St-Mare-Eglise. In this town the paratroopers landed to take out a German communications hub, and there a famous story of one particular paratrooper who got his parachute snagged in the church roof and stayed dangling off the church without moving until the town had been taken. There is still a dummy paratrooper hangin from the church roof today.
After a quick pastry it was time to head towards Brittant. Tonight we were staying in the village of Ducey. Rain started and we were drenched by the time we arrived. Ducey was lovely though. We were staying in hotel converted from an old mill on the side of a river. Very picturesque town and a very French meal from a local restaurant a 2 min walk from the hotel.
Everywhere we have been everyone is so friendly. Definitely not a Parisian experience.
