2025 Tour Day 16 - Arromanche

The Bayeax (Municipal).Campground had a covered eating area with picnic tables and a microwave oven. Woot woot. Breakfast for us today! And besides, you guessed it, it was raining. 

As we waited out the morning showers and enjoyed our hot drinks and oatmeal we made a new friend, a Scottish cyclist who lives in England now, Alastair. 

I know it looks bright behind us, but trust me, it was raining. 

Equipment note - it really poured last night and we had no water in the tent this morning. Good news we fixed the issues. However, 

We are down one tent stake. Not sure but we think it was run over by a lawn mower while we were at the museum yesterday. We brought 2 extra. Now we have one extra. 

The skies did indeed clear and we had the wind at our backs, and we set off for Arromanche. 

Arromanche is where the British built temporary harbours for D Day and beyond. An extraordinary effort and accomplishment under the visionary eye of Winston Churchill: 

Remnants can still be seen from the beaches of Arromanche.

And there is a hill top view to see the arc of caissons out at sea.

We cycled on past Gold Beach and onto Juno. 

I looked up the background to the names of the beaches. Of course they were all code names. Utah and Omaha are said to have been the places where two of the officers helping to plan the landing were from. Gold and Sword (where the British troops landed) were named after fish (goldfish and swordfish), but apparently Winston Churchill did not like "jelly / jellyfish" for the Canadian beach and thus is became Juno. 

Tomorrow we will explore the museum and do the bunker tour. Today we cycled the town and set up camp at Canadian Scotland Campground. 

Cheers!