Arrived at a site NW of Bayeux on Monday 3rd Oct and took quick visit east to Port en Bessin. This is a very busy little fishing port with a 1:5 slope down to it 🚵⛰️. On the way down I spotted this brilliant building overlooking the harbour –
D-Day beaches
Tuesday is our last full day of this trip, and we spent it riding up the coastal path of Normandy, passing Omaha and Utah beaches. We were both ( rather unexpectedly) very moved by the memorials and stories of the D-Day landings. Seeing the vast expanse of exposed beach and the clifftop gun emplacements made it seem incredible that anyone could have got across there intact.
I’m inspired to watch ‘ The Longest Day’ when we get back. Just makes you despair that some of our current leaders seem not to have learned the hard lessons of international cooperation and tolerance.
Some of our current leaders Jonathan? In the Netherlands we really have some
awfull partys with in my eyes. Never the less the 2 months flew over and hopefully you’re going to write also over England beautiful road home.
Take care on the road
So glad you managed to include some of the Normandy beaches and memorials in today. Watching The Longest Day, Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan will only ever be a cinematographers blurry take on the events. In my view, only by reading good books and memoirs are you able to get a real sense of what they went through in the war and then also by visiting the sites themselves as you did today to put a true perspective on the impossibility of what humble men achieved. Then of course, there are the cemeteries, which are the only true way to appreciate the scale of the losses and the absolute stupidity and bonkersness of war!! Let’s hope the current catastrophic war in Ukraine will come to a swift end soon!