Tue 10 Jun 2014 Cumulative distance 1705km (no change)
As we were close to the Normandy Landing beaches and the large crowds that had gathered for the 70th anniversary on 6 June had now dispersed across France, we thought it opportune to hire a car for a day and visit the sites of those momentous events. Over the years we've all read many accounts and seen numerous films and documentaries on the landings - now was a chance to see the actual places for ourselves.
After a reasonably quick trip from Lisieux our first stop was at Juno Beach, the site of the landings by Canadian troops. There were a lot of informative plaques located on the beachfront and we were surprised to see that many of the Canadians came equipped with folding bikes to facilitate quicker penetration into the hinterland. Apparently this worked better in theory than in practice, with most bikes dumped on the first day.
Our next stop was Arromanches, near Gold Beach, and the site of the Mulberry B harbour.
"By 9 June, just 3 days after D-Day, two harbours codenamed Mulberry A and B were constructed at Omaha Beach and Arromanches, respectively. However, a large storm on 19 June destroyed the American harbour at Omaha, leaving only the British harbour still intact but damaged. The surviving Mulberry B came to be known as Port Winston at Arromanches. Port Winston saw heavy use for 8 months, despite being designed to last only 3 months. In the 10 months after D-Day, it was used to land over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tonnes of supplies providing much needed reinforcements in France.
The Royal Engineers built a complete Mulberry harbour out of 600,000 tons of concrete with 33 jetties, and 16 kms of floating roadways to land men and vehicles on the beach. Port Winston is commonly upheld as one of the best examples of military engineering. Its remains are still visible today from the beaches at Arromanches." (Wikipedia)
We visited the recently completed audio-visual display centre and experienced in surround vision and sound the drama of the landings and subsequent Battle of Normandy, compiled from documentary footage drawn from numerous archives. Some of this film has not previously been widely shown.
Our final stop was at Collerville-sur-Mer, at a lookout that overlooks Omaha Beach and near to a large US war cemetry. From the lookout it was easy to see how exposed the US troops had been as they poured out of the landing craft and tried to cross the wide beach, with their enemies firing on them from the heights above. A very bloody affair, confirmed by the sobering sight of seemingly endless rows of white marble headstones marking the final resting places of so many young men.
Normandy Landings
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