It is Memorial Day in the US and the French are also doing a lot of Memorializing.
Utah Beach
After breakfast in sunshine, we left in rain, on and off all morning and a fierce wind. Welcome to Normandy.
We cycled out to the coast to see Utah Beach.
There was noticable concrete all along the sand dunes, the Germans poured so much concrete along these beaches.
And then we went by the museum, and saw the flags of all the Allied countries. It is quite impressive, the celebration of all.
Also along the beach was an observation tower and a long path out to a protected beach where apparently sometimes there are seals.
A view from the top of the tower, over the marshes.
We had to fight the wind coming inland to cross an inland waterway. It was tough against the wind and on rocky farm paths, but the road took us in to find an award winning bakery!
Boulangerie - Pâtisserie "Tout simplement"
Carentan-les-Marais
4.9 Google stars and awards on the windows for their croissant and sandwiches.
Famous and delicious.
The the main street of the town was decorated with flags to celebrate D Day.
On the way out of town Marc definitely wanted to try to oysters from the vending machine 😳
Another beautiful church where we stopped for our picnic lunch. Other cyclists stopped there too, but they had a full on picnic with a table cloth and wine! Jealous.
Grocery stop found us in Isigny-sur-Mer, with a beautiful City Hall (Hotel de Ville)
And very cute houses with their boats tied up outside, at low tide.
More quiet country roads and beautiful churches.
And a few more memorials - this to a member of the French Resistance.
We arrived at Omaha Beach Campgrounds and pitched our tent up against a hedge, but still the wind was so strong that we actually took a section out of the poles and made the tent about a foot shorter to be more sheltered. We were able to extend them again before bed, so I have some head room writing this 😉
At about 5 pm we suddenly heard a plane overhead and some sort of (older) military bomber flew by - wow, that was a little too real - gets the adrenaline going. It was a plane like this: (from Google)
We took shelter from the wind at the small outdoor cafe (not open until July) near the pool (too cold to think of swimming) to make our dinner - another great Marc Salad.
And then we did the steep hike down to the beach. Very steep.
The tide was coming in, and the beach was calm (looking south).
Looking north you can see the cliff at Point de Hoc, where soldiers had to scale the cliffs on D Day.
This memorial to the US National Guard is just off the beach. The monument on the left of this photo is built on top of a concrete barrier that held a powerful machine gun that sadly took the lives of many American soldiers as they landed here.
"Ever Forward"
May we continue to move Ever Forward, indeed.
Good night
But the real question is, did the oysters from the vending machine go to war with Marc's digestive system?
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, very interesting place to be on Memorial Day.
Great planing to be there on such an important day !! I definitely want to know too about the oysters, were they shelled, ready to eat , did it have lemon or hot sauce available? So many questions about this vending machine lol
ReplyDeleteNot shucked, and us with no shucking tool. So no oysters for us
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