NORMANDY 

Normandy D-day beaches and war memorials

D-day beaches and war memorials

  Ste-Mere-Eglise

 Caen-Musée pour le Paix

  Pegasus Bridge
Benouville
Ranville

Ouistreham

Saying that it rains every three days in Normandy is a euphemism. Even if its lower parts are drier, the Cotentin and higher parts live under an almost permanent shower. Irish situations! :-)
It is a known fact that Normandy is considered as the garden of Ile de France. That Ile de France where life used to be so good but slowly disappears under concrete and horrifying real estate plans from ruthless promoters.
Normandy is so cute, with its flourished cottages, artistic cows and a million charming details inviting you to say:” I love you, Normandy”.  But don’t forget we are in the 20th, oops 21th century now, and Normandy isn’t a wild, open cowboy country. Ultra-civilized and maintained like an English garden. Parisians discovered this sweet music a long time ago, foreigners do since a few years.
But this Normandy is the one I ‘m going to lead you and try to discover the romantic and exotics under the impressive and mysterious silhouette of Mont-Saint-Michel.
Let’s first start with what attract people most in Normandy: the D-day beaches and war memorials.

Cote de Nacre, mother-of-pearl coast, will be forever, simply, the D-day beaches for most visitors.
A coast bearing well its name since the long stretched impressive chalk cliffs that break up from time to time the wide open white sand beaches and which was the battlefield of all the images we all have seen  (in papers or movies).   Dream beaches in a savage decor, that the German army---very little preoccupied by ecology at that time--tried to drown into concrete. Combats were merciless, the SS panzer divisions not hesitating to shoot all war prisoners they could capture like 68 Canadian soldiers captured by the 12th SS Panzer division and shot near the abbey of Ardenne near Caen. Moments of heroism deserve our admiration, like the famous taking of the pointe de Hoc. Incredible technical exploits, like the building of an artificial port in Arromanches. Military catastrophes, like the slaughtering of American soldiers at Omaha beach.
Today, the cleaned combat fields, the bunker-memorials, the museums and reconstructed cities have nothing more in common with those terrible days of our contemporary history.
The landing dented irrepressibly what would otherwise be a long line of seaside-resorts and quiet ports devoted to harvesting its excellent shellfish. These superb sites are now forever associated with hundreds of blockhouses, an absorbing legacy of casemates, memorials, museums and military cemeteries that stand at ease amid the beach hotels, of what has become a popular summerly holiday destination.

The traditional circuit links Ouistreham to Saint-Mere-Eglise, via Arromanches, Bayeux, Colleville and the pointe du Hoc. Several villages share the territories of the five coded beaches (Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah), keeping numerous souvenirs of the Atlantic wall and the landings. I advise you to start the visit of all the sites related to the allied landing in Normandy by the indispensable "Memorial de Caen" and visit Caen of course at the same time, follow the estuary of the Orne until Ouistreham, then drive along the coast to Longues-sur-Mer. Make an obligatory incursion to Bayeux, and return to the coast again.

Bibliography

A holiday history of France, by Ronald Hamilton (London-Hogarth press), Region Normandie, ses merveilles, ses cicatrices, by Louis Letellier (ed. Cloison, Rouen 1995), Holt’s battle field guides, Normandy Overlord by Holt, Tonie and Valmai (Sandwich, Kent), La France des petits chemins: Normandie, by J. de la Valléé (ed. Cité presse, Paris 1998), Six armies in Normandy, by John Keegan, (paperback ed. Pimlico)

Arromanches artificial port

 Bayeux war memorials

 Omaha beach 
     
 
Pointe du Hoc
     
 
Utah Beach