Normandy Landing trip

Well we are off on the ocean wave and say goodbye to dear old Blighty, with one of us singing 'for those in peril on the sea'.


However the sea is calm as a millpond and everybody is happy as Larry.


So calm we were able to enjoy a hearty meal - chicken curry, not very British or French .


Land ahoy! we approach Calais with its distinctive town hall.


This is our B&B, in Arromanches, that doesn't do breakfast. Quite a comfortable and cosy room once you get used to that incredibly orange wall! Notice the red bag, its amazing how many pictures it pops up.


This is the hotel we should have stayed at and our B&B in the background. Our room is the right one in the peak with the shutters open. We left them open only to find that our room was awash with rain water when we returned. Good idea these shutters, but only if you remember to use them!


And here we are enjoying our first meal in the hotel restaurant. What a motley crew.


This is the view from our room, straight across the English Channel.The blobs in the background are the remains of the Mulberry Harbour built by the British. They floated a concrete harbour across the channel and then sank them to make a harbour the size of the one at Dover, bloomin' amazing! The Americans did a similar one along the coast but theirs blew away within 2 weeks.


A view of the town of Arromanches. A very nice little typically French town, although now mainly existing for the tourist trade surrounding the Landings.


This was the sunset across the harbour on the first night. Just as well I took it then as it was cloudy and rainy every other night, with the last night providing us with an impressive storm that shredded all the flags and made most of the party very nervous about the return channel crossing.


Although only a small town it had some spectacular typically French houses. Many of them seemed to completely shuttered, this is due to them being second homes to Parisian families.


Mind you some of the houses looked as if they would not be out of place in a Hitchcock film, especially in the twilight, which doesn't happen until almost midnight at this time of the year (June).


The town may have been typically French with its attractive patisserie, coffee houses cum restaurants and trendy clothes shops but it still managed to have a little toy train. Can't help thinking of Bill Bryson.


Now to the trip proper. At the start of each day we had croissants and coffee at the other B&B (which amazingly did do breakfast) and Dave usefully gave us a run down of our days itinerary with the aid of excerpts from the film 'The Longest Day'. That is once he had got the technology to work! 'The Longest Day', apart from the American bias and overacting is apparently a very accurate film of the Landings.


This is the cliff that the Americans scaled with their 'crack troop' of soldiers, although a better strategy would have been to have parachuted on to the fields inland and attacked them from behind. It seems that it was pure bravado to attack up the cliff.


This picture is taken from the German gun emplacement at the top of the cliff looking down to Utah beach. It is not difficult to see why the Americans suffered many casualties. However if you watch 'The Longest Day' you will see that John Wayne sorted it all out and won the war single handed.


Having scrambled up the cliff this is what faced them, frightening hey (the gun emplacement not Mother). They had expected an huge gun to be in place but it turned out that the Germans were running out of equipment in general and had not got round to arming them to any great extent. That and the fact that the German General in charge of Normandy had decided to go to a Birthday party that night (thinking the allies would not attack in bad weather, but when did bad weather stop the British, even on holiday), thankfully, gave the allies the edge.


This is Juno and Sword beach that the British and Canadian troops invaded. The French have given a good account of themselves in fairly representing and honouring all participants that took part in the Landings. The array of country flags is a good indication of this. There are numerous good museums and have some very tasteful statues/monuments.


This monument depicts the boats of the landing fleet and is sited on Juno Beach. Not unlike the one at Aldeburgh , except this one has a reason for being where it is.


This is a person who is obviously and rightly impressed.


Another very tasteful dedication to those that lost their lives.


Having found a cafe for lunch we met two veterans who had taken part in the invasion and thankfully survived. One of them had managed to make it several miles inland and then been wounded, and the other had ended up swimming in the Channel for eight hours before being rescued. An emotional time for them to return.


The German cemetery. Quite sombre with its black crosses but suitably respectful.


The British cemetery beautifully kept and with exactly the right feeling of respect.


However, the individual stories they told was very sad.


This is St Mere Eglise church (occupied by the Germans at the time) where a British paratrooper ended up caught on the tower by his parachute and was shot, but by pretending to be dead he survived.

The window in the church commemorates this story.


Nothing to do with WW2, this is the town of Bayeux (another very nice very French town), as in the Bayeux tapestry. We had a visit to see the tapestry and were suitably impressed - it is huge, 70 metres long and old, 900 years! It is woven in wool on linen and tells the story of event leading to the invasion of England by William the Conqueror. Well worth a visit. only the very observant will have spotted the 'red bag' this time.


Even without the tapestry Bayeux should be on anybody's itinerary.


This for me was the highlight of the trip, Pegasus Bridge. This bridge needed to be captured, intact. The Germans had troops guarding it and explosives strapped to in the event of its capture. The British successfully captured the bridge completely intact by flying four gliders full of soldiers to within 43 yards of the bridge on a cloudy and rainy night. To enable the element of surprise, they had to land the gliders between the river and the canal and get close to the bridge but not hit it, which they did.


Having captured the bridge they then liberated this cafe, thus becoming the very first property to be liberated by allied troops. The cafe is still owned by the same family 60 years on. There is that red bag again.


This is the glider used in the operation. It is made of plywood and tissue paper and termed as a use once only aircraft! Often they split open on landing having ripped off their undercarriage in the process.


Would you want to travel across the channel and land in enemy territory at night in this? Hardly Club Class.


Casualties were quite low, given the risks involved but not all survived. Even amongst the survivors it must have had a lasting effect. We heard of one soldier who recently died and requested his ashes be scattered on the bridge. Seems amazing that he was on the bridge for only a matter of hours, yet it had that lifelong memory for him.


We are on our way home now and visiting Honfleur on the way. Yet another nice French town with all the atmosphere you would expect of being in France. Street cafes abound around a harbour surrounded by typical French architecture.


Although we ate more simply. We managed to avoid taking a picture of the following course, a crepe that dribbled syrupy sugar all down the front of our clothes. It then set and became extremely efficient contact adhesive. Luckily Little Miss Be Prepared had huge quantities of 'wipes' in that well known little red bag.


A typical street and of course 'the red bag'.


The towns we visited were all very civilised and, adding to this, most of them had Merry Go Rounds in the town square, although this one was probably the most ornate.


Also a lot of the towns had plenty of tasteful community art, like the one above on a roundabout in Honfleur, dedicated to the female mussel pickers.
Then it was back to Calais, for thankfully, another smooth crossing to Dover.


And finally back, all played out.