We have been to Normandy four times now and never visited the D Day beaches, today we would put that right. Although we didn't have a plan, we just drove towards the coast and thought we would just see where we ended up. On the Bayeux ring road we passed a very large supermarket and made a note for future reference.
The first place we ended up was, Port-en-Bessin-Huppain, the place where on D Day+1, troops from Omaha Beach linked up with the 47th Royal Marine Commandos, who had struggled its way from Gold Beach. Of course we didn't know any of this when we were there, I found it very hard to find information on the landings. Even in the tourist information building but we had a nice walk round the place anyway.
We had a look to see if there was anything we fancied for lunch and nearly got poulet baguette sandwiches but there were a lot of wasps, walking on the food in the display cabinets, we changed or minds. If you have read any of my stuff before, you will probably know that if there is a pier, we will usually walk to the end of it, well this time it was just too windy for that.
We moved on, driving north along the coast until we came to Arromanches-les-Bains. I was wondering where the remains of the Mulberry harbour where, well it was pretty plain to see as we drove in, they were here. We parked to the north of town, next to a museum with great views of the harbour from the cliffs, we did have to pay though. Port Winston at Arromanches, or the Mulberry harbour, was a British type of temporary harbour developed in World War II to offload cargo on the beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy. The harbour had been a lot bigger than I though and a lot of it was still in position after all this time.
It was still very windy and the weather couldn't make it's mind up as to rain or not but we walked down the steep path into town anyway and the sun came out when we got down there.
I took a photo of Dot next to a tank on the way down and had a rest, if it was hard going down, how were we going to get back up. At the bottom of the cliffs we went straight on to the beach to look at the remains on the beach, while the tide was out
Down on the beach the parts of the harbour you can get to are very big pieces of equipment indeed, it must have been a fantastic sight in use and was an amazing feat of engineering.
We had a long walk along the beach and Dot had to have a plodge in the sea before we headed back into town to find something to have for lunch. We got a chicken baguette and a baguette pizza, we waited an age for the lady to warm the pizza, which was a waste of time because it was still not hot. We sat on the sea front and sheared the food then went back and looked in the souvenir shops.
We took a different route back up to the car park, it didn't seem to be as steep, it was starting to get windy again so we headed back to the campsite. We called in to the large supermarket we made a note of earlier in the day and spent quit a lot of money. I was charged for four boxes of Leffe when I only bought two, to make it easier for customer services, instead of a refund, I just took two more boxes of Leffe, it won't go to waste.
On the way back into the site we parked at the bar and went in for a drink, it was even more expensive than the previous site about 15% more for two beers. We did have a couple though, before going back for supper.
No comments:
Post a Comment