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  Bayeux, Normandy, France
Wednesday, July 6, 2011

So, our last full day has arrived......

Rather than eat bread & jam again in the hotel we decided we'd head
into town & have something. We found a nice cafe bar close to where we’d had
dinner the night before. I ordered 2 teas & then wandered 50m up the road
& bought a ham & cheese baguette, a pain au choclat for Sam and a pain
au raisin for myself and returned to the cafe for a leisurely breakfast in the
sun, watching the world (or at least a small part of Rouen) go by.

After brekkie we got the bike a nice big tank of Super98 and, with everyone
full & happy, set off along the country roads towards the Normandy beaches.
First stop was Melville Battery, a German gun casement that was part of Hitlers
Atlantic wall which was designed to keep the British out. I thought it’d be a
concrete bunker in a field so was a bit taken aback to pay €5 each to gain
entry. But it was so much more than that. That had a restored C47 (military
version of the Douglas DC3) which they’d located in Bosnia Herzegovina,
stripped back to the fuselage in order to transport to northern France and then
restored it before putting it on display. According to the display it had
actually been involved in the D Day landings as paratrooper transport so it was
the genuine article.


Each of the casements contained panels telling the story of the landings
with particular reference to Melville itself as well as display cases with
various equipment & personal posessions. There were also panels telling the
stories of some of the English combatants, like the young lad who wrote to his
mother saying he was heading off to France but not to worry he’d be back soon,
only for him to die on his first day in France. Or the one from a soldier
written to his from a trench saying he was surrounded & expected to be
captured shortly. Apparently he was dead within the hour but a Canadian soldier
found the letter on his body & made sure it got to his mother. It’s one
thing reading that x thousands died on D Day or xx thousands in Normandy but
it’s stuff like that that really brings it home to you that these were ordinary
human beings in situations that, thankfully, we can’t even begin to understand.


There was more good stuff, like mock-ups (diaramas ?) of radio rooms,
dormitories, etc as well as a very loud sound & light show but I won’t bore
you with the detail. When we moved on we were both lost in our own thoughts
& it was a while before we felt like turning the music on. We’d been there
much longer than expected so we did a quick 'drive-by’ of the Pegasus Bridge
before pulling into a cafe beside where it originally resided for a bit of
lunch.




From there we went to Juno Park, the Canadian memorial, and wandered around
it without going into the visitor centre as it was nearly closing time. Next
stop was at the Arromanches 360 cinema to find out when it opened in the
morning & then we dropped down into the town for an icecream and a look at
what remains of the Mulberry harbour. Mairead Hennessy did a very good write up
on that so go & reread her blog.....


We’d super weather all day, mid twenties, and some lovely quiet country
roads. One more day of the same please & we’ll go away happy and full of
praise for France ;-)

Our accommodation tonight was provided by Etap Bayeux in one of their ‘new’
layouts – a seperate toilet half the size of a cupboard, the sink in the
bedroom & a shower (a plastic cubicle like on the ferry) with a glass door
! now I don’t consider myself a prude or particularly shy but I wouldn’t feel
very comfortable if I was sharing that with another bloke. Sometimes ‘new’
doesn’t translate as ‘better’. Dinner was in a Courte Paille Grill where we
both had steak but, given that all they do is grill meat, I expected it to be
better. The steak in Rouen was streets ahead. You live & learn ;-)

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