Normandy

Another week without internet .....

August 10

After cleaning the gite we headed off to Normandy. A stop first at Dinan, a reasonable size town situated above the river Rance. In mediaeval times Dinan was a primary supply point for St Malo and the coastal trade and there is a small port on the river. However the first thing we saw on entering the town was Gillian's happy place, a market. We found a park and walked back through the old town which had a number of half timbered houses, including the Rue de Porches – so named because of the number of “porch” houses with the first floor cantilevered out across the street. The cathedral, Basilisque St Sauveur,here is notable for housing the heart of Bertrand du Guesclin . He was a 14^th century knight noted for his hatred of the English! The Basilisque is a huge, sober church, quite dark and with a soaring Gothic chancel. A nice feel to it and I much enjoyed the tolling of the 12:00 bells.

Having wandered round the “old stuff” we spent half an hour cruising through the market, then headed off to Mont St Michel. The mount is well set up for large numbers of tourists on the land side with huge carparks and a steady stream of shuttle buses. While there were a number of people walking, we opted for the shuttle which turned out to be a strange double ended vehicle with a driving cab and a small platform at each end. While it may save a minute turning round at each end, it seems to be a waste of space that could have been used to increase the capacity.

The causeway to the mount is being replaced by a new bridge. While the bridge is in place the road at the mount end still requires work, so we were taken over the causeway. We entered the mount through a narrow gate in the wall (the only entrance I think) and found there is only one road. First it crosses a drawbridge, through a gatehouse then winds up the east side of the hill getting steeper and narrower as it goes. Given the number of people the crush was intense as in parts the raod could only take 3 people abreast and the traffic was in both directions. The road was lined with old houses all of them turned into restaurants, creperies, souvenir shops and other tourist traps.

We skipped the prisons and dungeons tour (the mount had been used as a prison for 200 years after the French revolution) and climbed many flights of stairs to the cathedral. The cathedral complex is stark as it has almost no ornamentation, but it's sheer scale and position are impressive. The cathedral itself is perched on top of the rock pinnacle with supporting columns arranged around to support the weight. On the north side are monastery buildings which rise to the level of the cathedral with 4 levels containing a refectory, kitchens, chapels, chapter house, ... topped with large church and cloisters. The rooms are of huge dimensions, particularly when you consider that the lower floors support thousands of tonnes of stone above.

In the complex of rooms around the columns under the cathedral itself is a tread mill used for raising supplies and building materials to the level of the cathedral. It was powered by 3 men walking inside the wheel which has a diameter of about 6m. The wheel pulled a trolley up an almost vertical track up from the area of the gatehouse.

After leaving the mount we headed for our next gite in Caumont-L'Evente. It is a one bedroom one level cottage apparently built against an old wall as a lean-to at the back of a tennis court.

Heading out to find a restaurant we found the only place in town was closed for a private function so tried the next village where we had a reference for a restaurant (10km away), but found that closed so headed home for a meal of fresh Breton produce we had bought with us. Strange to have nothing available on a Saturday night!

August 11

Today we first headed to a nearby town of Togrigne-Sur-Vivre here there is a real farmers market. We didn't find the calves that had been mentioned in our guide, but there were all sorts of fowl and rabbits available. Some of the rabbits were displayed in cane baskets with nothing stopping them escaping, but when they did move it was only to hop into the neighbouring basket from where they were picked up by the scruff of the neck and firmly put back into their correct one. It was aa cooler day – around 19 – 20 degrees at this time of day and the ducklings and rabbits were all huddled together in their cages for warmth. Every so often one or other who were on the outer edge would scramble over the ones further in in a bid to warm up their rear end! This caused a general reconfiguration and jockeying for the best spot!!

Normandy beaches

We drove up to the beaches and visited Utah beach first.The US soldiers who landed here fared better than those who landed on Omaha beaches. Most of their landing craft made it to shore and they cleared the area by mid day. By nightfall 20,000 men and 1700 vehicles had arrived. There were several memorials to Engineers and Navy including one to the Danish Navy. There was a flat sandy beach backed by dunes. No evidence of the action there remains,unlike our next stop at Pointe Du Hoc.

This was a sobering site. At 7:10am on 6 June 1944 225 US army Rangers commanded by Lt Col James Earl Rudder scaled the 30 metre sheer cliffs here, where the Germans had a battery of huge artillary guns perfectly positioned to rain shells on the beaches of Utah and Omaha. The Rangers did not know that these guns had been transferred inland. There were still Germans in the bunkers reamined at Pointe Du Hoc armed with rifle, machine guns, anti aircraft guns etc and it wasn't until 8 june, when relief arrived were the US Rangers able to dislodge the Germans.At this time 81 Rangers were dead and 58, including Rudder himself, were wounded.The reason relief did not come earlier was due to a delay in the rangers landing and ascent of the cliffs. They were not able to land where they had intended, lost the element of surprise and their ropes were wet and did not function as well as they should have. The time set for sending a signal of success on making it to the Pointe Du Hoc, 6.00am was not achieved as they arrived an hour and 10 minutes late!!! One bunker can be visited still although many are still there – in ruins. The bunker we visited is the observation bunker sited right at the edge of the Pointe with sheer drop below it and an excellent view over Utah and Omaha beaches. It is a rabbit warren of small dark rooms and a larger room with a semi circular slit at head height. There were about that 5-6 gun emplacements.All that remains of these are either almost complete and others in ruins. We did not get to Longues Sur Mer where the only in situ weapons remain.

 The next stop was Omaha beach. There are steep rise behind the beach ( now clad with houses – some of which would have been there at the time of the landings). The beach itself is a long flat golden beach. I shuddered at the thought of men landing, often in deep water, and struggling in to shore, weighed down with weaponry, underwater obstacles and mines. They were under machine gun and mortar fire from the Germans on the rises above the beach. Many drowned, many died from this fire coming from 3 battalions of heavily armed, highly trained Germans. No wonder veterans called this “Bloody Omaha”. Of the 2500 men who landed, 1,000 were fatalities,most of them dying in the first hour of landing.Toady we saw no sign of the battle that had raged here. It was by now 22 degrees and people were swimming and enjoying the beach despite the strong wind and patchy cloud covered sky.As it was not long after high tide there was no sign of the Mulberry Harbour remains.

I really felt overwhelmed by images as I read memorials and acknowledgements of what these men did, achieved and often gave their lives for.One inscription, inside the Bunker at Pointe Du Hoc read:”Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for his friends”. That sent a chill down my spine because this is exactly where and is exactly what these young men did in the face of horrific conditions. I wondered about the fear, terror, rage they might have experienced, how they went forward onto completely unknown territory.

So leaving what is now a pretty stretch of coast line we went to the American Cemetery and
memorial.It is situated The photos speak for themselves about the extent of the graves, white crosses and stars of David.There are 9387 graves of US soldiers including including 41 pairs of brothers. There is also a memorial to 1557 soldiers whose remains were never found. To read the figures of the dead is shocking, to see the graves row upon row, stretching out further and further is a sad, sad feeling. We wandered along the rows, some unknown “Only not to God” , most young men who were so young at their time of death. I felt that this was all so very wrong but what alternative was there?

Actually there are a number of war cemetries in this part of Normandy. All beautifully maintained and peaceful. As we wandered toward the memorial I reflected on the large numbers of young men and women who were visiting the site. I wondered as to their reasons.The memorial is huge and documents the extent of the allied forces activities in Europe and in particular in the Battle of Normandy. Across the top of this curved memorial are the words in Latin: We, once conquered by William, have now set free the Conqueror's native land.” These words are so poignant.I tried to photo this inscription - not sure what it will look like. Now! I have just discovered that these are the words at the Bayeau War Commonwealth memorial cemetery – on a not dissimilar arcade! Make sense – why would the US write that!

The final stop was to Aromanches where we went up to a hill east of the town where there is a statue of the Virgin Mary.From here we had a stunning view of the area where the Mulberry Harbour had been ( destroyed by a huge storm 2 weeks after D -Day landings) and where you can still see parts of the Port Winston. These huge concrete caissons were towed over from England and then sunk to form these semicircular breakwaters. These facilitated the landing of 2.5 million men , 4 million tonnes of equipment and 500,000 vehicles! As we looked out over the remains of Port Winstoe, still evident after all these years, it bought home to me just how massive these landings were, the preparation, planning.So many variables were involved,so many resources,so many countries were involved – including the free French and the resistance, so many opportunities for things to go wrong. How grateful I felt that in the end it spelt the end of the Nazi regime even though so many, many people suffered so much. Photos of the French people living in Normandy during this battle and accounts of how much they suffered really made bought home to me that as this war raged about them their live were torn apart.

We looked down from this hill at Gold beach where the British landed. They did encounter real hazards when they landed in high water but within 2 hours the Allied armored divisions were on land. They did not have steep rises behind the beach to contend with.

We noted that the memorials to the Allied forces ( including Canadian) were much less evident in the area of Gold and Juno beaches. While American, Canadian and British flags fly in all towns along te coast it is at Utah and Omaha and Pointe Du Hoc that the detailed accounts of the landings and large memorials are present. They give a really good account of conditons, events and people involved.

That completed our visit.A very important visit and one worth remembering.

August 12

We headed up to Bayeux and found the main carpark full. After cruising through narrow one way streets we happened on someone leaving a park on the other side of the road. Once I got over the natural NZ reluctance to park facing the wrong way we grabbed it and found that we had scored a free park on the back door of the tapestry museum! We didn't find this out until later as we walked right past the museum without seeing any signage and even with a determined search couldn't find the tourist office. Since we could see the cathedral we headed there.

The exterior of the cathedral is a superb example of a late Gothic architecture with spidery flying buttresses around the east end with a solid Romanesque style facade to the west. The interior was not ornate, but had a degree of solemnity. Even with the sizeable crowd there was a feeling of calm.

Following a sign (back towards our car) we found our way to the tapestry museum and joined a long queue at the ticket office, then another queue for the audio guides. Finally in to the gallery of the tapestry we moved in a slow procession along the length of the gallery listening to the commentary scene by scene then turned across the far end and continued back down the other side. The “tapestry” is very long (60m I seem to recall), but only about 600mm high. It was designed to be displayed aroung the nave of the cathedral to illustrate the events of the Norman conquest of England. There is a central panel with the events depicted with top and bottom borders for most of the length with gryphons, centaurs and other mythical creatures with occasional non-secateurs such as donkeys and scenes from Aesops Tales. The tapestry is actually a woolen embroidery on linen cloth and is in remarkably good condition given nearly 1000 years and less than ideal storage for some of it. After the revolution it was almost used as a tarpaulin on a wagon bound for Paris. After WWII it was recovered from the German arts haul at the Louvre and returned to Bayeux. Apparently the last panel is missing and there is no comment on what the may have contained.

The actual artwork is astonishingly consistent and, with the commentary explaining the scenes, the continuity and amount of information contained in the simple pictures is astonishing. While the depiction is from the Norman point of view, it depicts Harold in good terms in some scenes and doesn't shy away from the problems the Normans faced on a couple of occasions. I found it interesting that no-one knows who created it, why or where. There are plenty of theories, but there is no record.

On leaving the museum around 2pm we found the queues to get in had disappeared.

August 13

A quiet day in the gite with a trip to Balleroy in the afternoon to visit the chateau there. With indifferent weather we didn't tour the grounds much, but did a tour through some of the rooms in the 
chateau. The property was purchased by a wealthy American in the 1970s who restored it after it had been in the hands of the Balleroy family for 600 years. It was originally constructed in the 1630s in a grand style with an architectural plan that included a broad approach avenue and a planned town around the entrance. The chateau itself is not huge, but has an imposing frontage when viewed from the approach. At some point (19^th century?) someone had decorated the 3 bedrooms on the first floor of the south wing with themes of Queen Victoria, the Battle of Waterloo and Louis-Phillippe 1^st. Every room we saw had huge paintings on every wall and the main room on the first floor had a ceiling painted with the 4 seasons and the related zodiacal symbols.

August 14

We decided that Le Havre was too far given the relatively few attributes that caught our fancy, so we started at Trouville-sur-Mer and Deauville, 2 seaside towns, one each side of the River Auge. Trouville is the older town with character and is still a fishing port with a wide flat beach. Deauville is a newer and brasher town with modern imitation half timber buildings on a grand scale and a waterfront given up to swanky facilities and lined with monstrous houses and apartments.

Moving on we headed down the Auge Valley stopping first at Beaumont-en-Auges which has a
panoramic view over the valley, a great selection of old houses, many half timbered, and a claim to fame as the birthplace of tbe mathematician Laplace.

Next stop was Beuvron-en-Auge in the middle of the cider producing region. A quick stop at the local producer to sample the cider and calvdos. While the hostess had little English, there was enough graphic information in the sales room to show that the calvados (apple brandy) is made from the cider using pot stills.

At Crevecoeur-en Auge we passed on inspecting the Norman castle, but found the town was a delightful old world village. Many of the towns in this region are minute with one we passed through seeming to only have a church and 2 farms spread over 1km.

We finished the tour at Cambremer, supposedly the chief market town of the region, but we couldn't find the market square and the weather was closing in so we called it quits and headed back to Caumont L'Event by way of an Intermarche supermarket where we hovered for half an hour over a variety of fish and meat skewers trying to decide on the dinner menu.

August 15

Our last relaxing day for the trip. At last the sun has come out so we sat round the swimming pool and talked to our neighbours, a family from Worchester.