The day before we finished the day with a walking tour of Rouen which has quite an extensive medieval section of the city and a lovely cathedral that was damaged during World War 2 but compared to others did well.
Our first stop was at Pegasus Bridge and the Ranville
Airborne Memorial Museum with its full-scale replica Horsa glider and original
bridge. The displays were well done, especially the technology used to explain
the battle. At the Ranville cemetery we
paid respects to an Australian Spitfire pilot who was recovered in 2010 who was
buried there. One of the highlights was
visiting the historic town of Bayeux and visiting the museum with the Bayeux Tapestry. Boy it was big and long, the audio-guide to
accompany it was invaluable. We had lunch in the town and we could have had the
chef’s special, chicken fries…it is good to see that traditional food from
Normandy continues.
We visited the Bayeux British Cemetery the largest WW2 cemetery
in France with 6 000 known graves which contained many different nationalities. We found a couple of Aussie lads from the
RAAF there.
Next was the Arromanches Museum that we didn’t go into and
the remains of the Mulberry artificial harbour on Gold Beach. Our guide told us that we were very lucky
that it was low tide as several of the blocks were exposed that she had never
seen – our good fortune continues! Being
a seaside town, Arromanches is very touristy and there were lots of car and
bike enthusiasts who seem to be touring Normandy from the UK. A quiet spot it was not.
Next was the Canadian Juno Beach Museum which was very good
but we couldn’t stay long. There were some
coastal fortifications outside to photograph.
Unfortunately we didn’t go to Omaha Beach which I would have much
preferred but it was worth seeing the Bayeaux Tapestry.
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