Accommodation at Le
Mesnil de Créances or
nearby.Tour Example No.1:
Normandy – Beaches, Battles and Beauty
5 days
How to get there:
From North America
Fly to Paris, then train from Gare Saint-Lazare to CAEN. Pick up hire car from one of the 5 agencies opposite the station.
From the UK
Cross by P&O from Portsmouth to Cherbourg, or by Brittany Ferries from Poole to Cherbourg
Accommodation at Le
Mesnil de Créances or
nearby.
Day 1
Arrival
North Americans drive from Caen to Créances via SAINT-LÔ, passing on the way the Château de Balleroy, a 17th-century masterpiece now owned by the Forbes family.
Those coming from the UK should arrive about midday and come to Créances via BARFLEUR, one of the most beautiful villages in France.
Day 2
Tour of the Invasion Beaches
North Americans can start this tour at Barfleur, which they missed yesterday, then on to Saint-Mère-Église. Brits go straight to Sainte-Mère-Église, where there are 3 things to see:
1)
The church steeple, with a dummy parachutist hooked onto one of the
spirelets. This commemorates the unfortunate John Steele, whose
parachute caught on the church at 1am on D-Day when the 101st
Airborne were dropped onto the village.
2) The AIRBORNE MUSEUM, further up the main square, with a tow plane and a section of a glider like the ones used on D-day.
3) Outside the Town Hall, the KILOMETRE 0 milestone, start of the Road of Liberty through France to Germany.
From Sainte-Mère-Église follow the signposts to UTAH BEACH.
UTAH was the most westerly of all the invasion beaches, and the one where the US army managed to create a beachhead and proceed into the interior after only about 4 hours. There is a Museum here – the film show is better than the captions on the exhibits – dealing specifically with the D-day invasion.
From Utah beach, continue in the direction of CAEN.
Soon after ISIGNY the German Cemetery of LA CAMBE can be seen on the right.
Turn off here and follow the signs to the Pointe du Hoc, where the American Ranges climbed the sheer cliffs to capture a German battry capable of enfilading the whole of Omaha Beach. This area was thoroughly shelled and bombed on D-Day – the battleship USS Texas alone fired 600 14-inch shells – and the impressive results of this bombardment can be seen to this day.
From
here go on to Omaha Beach and visit the American Cemetery at
Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, then on to BAYEUX, to see the British Cemetery
and the MUSEUM OF THE BATTLE OF NORMANDY.
Also worth visiting in Bayeux are the Cathedral, the Bayeux Tapestry (made after that other invasion in 1066), the Lace Museum and the medieval Town centre.
From Bayeux, the road North leads to ARROMANCHES, where the vestiges of the Mulberry Harbour, the artificial port towed across from England, can still be seen, as well as a D-day museum with a 360-degree cinema. In this area, also worth seeing is the German battery at Longueville, which still retains three of its original four heavy guns.
British visitors, who saved time by visiting Barfleur yesterday, might like to go on further West, to the British and Canadian beaches - Gold, Juno and Sword. The new PEGASUS BRIDGE Museum between Caen and Ouistreham tells the story of the British Airborne troops who secured the Eastern Flank of the beachhead in the same way as the American Airborne troops secured the western.
Day 3
The Cotentin Peninsula
Lessay
Sleepy little Lessay, with its wonderful Abbey church dating from the time of William the Conqueror, wakes up with a start for three days on the second weekend in September every year, when the everyday population of 2,000 is swollen by 350,000 visitors to the annual Holy Cross Fair.
You may not be there on that day, nor perhaps the one day a year when the Abbey gardens are open to the public; but the church itself is an experience not to be missed.
La Haye du Puits
was considerably knocked about during the war; – General Patton’s camp can be visited nearby – but it has been rebuilt as a lively, bustling little market town. Recently, the façades of the shops in the main square have been repainted in pastel colours. Avoid the bypass here; the centre is charming.
St-Sauveur-le-Vicomte
The vast castle here is mostly English-built; they held the place from 1356 to 1375 and pretty much rebuilt it. The Abbey, with its romanesque church, is the Mother House of an order of nursng sisters.
Valognes
calls itself ‘The Versailles of the Cotentin’, which is a pretty wild claim. However, there are several great 17th-century houses to visit, and one even older which houses the Regional Cider Museum.
Cherbourg
used to be the port of departure for transatlantic liners (including the Titanic), and its deep-water berth still frequently hosts cruise ships. The port is the world’s biggest artificial harbour, and was a major objective for the allied forces after D-day.
The town of Cherbourg is charming; not too large, with pedestrian streets, picturesque quaysides and good shopping, and a spectacular view from the Fort du Roule on its cliff above the town.
This is the North-western corner of the Cotentin, a granite outcrop very similar to Brittany or Cornwall, with tiny winding roads and houses huddled into valleys out of the wind. The painter Millet came from Gréville, and the poet Jacques Prévert spent his last years in a house behind Port-Racine, the smallest port in France. Prévert’s garden is open to visitors. The extreme tip, Cap de la Hague, is rocky but flat; Goury with its enormous lighthouse, sailor’s memorial and lifeboat station is worth a visit. Don’t miss the Nez de Jobourg (above), which claims to be France’s highest cliff, and the entrancing Baie d’Écalgrain which nestles beneath it. There’s even a nuclear power station at Flamanville which can be visited (I found it fascinating) and a reprocessing plant at La Hague where the rare guided tours are restricted to those of French nationality.
Bricquebec
The vast medieval castle here enshrines a 3-star hotel with an excellent restaurant. Explore the castle and, if you’re here in the Summer, perhaps dine before going on towards the sunset.
Carteret
is a pleasant little seaside town, with excellent seafood restaurants offering an alternative dinner venue. The view from the cliff above the town over the sea and the Island of jersey is also very nourishing.
St-Germain-sur-Ay
The very best way to finish a
day in the Cotentin is to watch the sun set over the Western Ocean.
At Saint-Germain there is an old lookout post on a little rocky
headland, now a sailors’ chapel, very romantic. Watch it from
there.
Day 4
le Mont Saint-Michel
Today, we travel South from Créances and visit:
Coutances is our Cathedral town, spectacularly built on a steep rock amid a saucer of hills. The crest of the ridge is crowned by three great medieval churches: St.-Nicolas, of the earliest Gothic in style; the Cathedral, the acknowledged masterpiece of Norman Gothic; and Saint-Pierre, late Gothic and Renaissance. Besides these, the greatest glory of the town is its park, the Jardin des Plantes, originally the private garden of the house which is now the town museum. Here, a formal French garden with fountains and floral sculptures is surrounded by an English garden full of shady walks and winding paths, in its turn surrounded by a belt of virgin woodland. The contrasts and the views afforded by this inspired landscaping are worth travelling a long way to see.
Though its assumed title of ‘Monaco of the North’ may be a little over the top (mind you, there’s a casino and an aquarium and some very nice rocks, and the sea here is always of the deepest blue), Granville is nevertheless a major holiday resort with many attractions. Don’t miss the view from the Pointe du Roc, or the busy activities of the fishing fleet; stroll in the medieval streets of the Old Town on its hilltop, the walls still intact even to drawbridges and watchtowers. The beach, like all those in the Département de la Manche, is sandy and clean, but it’s unusually small and you have to arrive early to find a parking space anywhere near it. There are fine stretches of beach, however, at the smaller resorts on either side of the town. On the clifftops perch a series of luxurious holiday villas, including the one (above) where Christian Dior spent part of his childhood. Villa and gardens now form a Dior Museum.
Le Mont Saint-Michel
The most visited monument in France consists of a golden angel on top of a spire on top of a church on top of a monastery on top of a citadel on top of a village on top of a fortress on top of a car park. English people ask, ‘Isn’t it a bit like St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall?’ – and so it is, just as the Statue of Liberty is a bit like a table lamp. During nine months of the year, the tiny streets at the base of the rock are horribly overcrowded and disfigured by a myriad souvenir shops; but as one climbs, the crowds thin out, the monastic calm takes over and the charm and beauty of the place make themselves felt.
Within the next few years, the car park which disfigures the Mont will be returned to the sea, and the island will be reborn, approached by a simple new bridge from the mainland. This will give new life to a site which has inspired visions of romantic cities from Malory to Tolkien.
Avranches
is a hilltop town whose Jardin des Plantes, a park in the full-blown French tradition, has the best of all views over the bay of Mont Saint-Michel.
The name means ‘Town-of-God-the-frying-pans’, and if you need pots and pans, you couldn’t go to a better place. Villedieu is full of little workshops where coppersmiths beaver away at all sorts of vessels in copper, brass and pewter. You can also visit one of the biggest and oldest the bell-foundries in France. The church contains a number of examples of the fine post-war stained glass of this part of Normandy.
Pirou
is the next village South from Créances. Like most villages in the area, it comes in several widely-separated parts (Créances is divided into more than a dozen small hamlets). Pirou Bourg is less than a mile from Le Mesnil. At Pirou Pont the Château, founded by Vikings and rebuilt in the twelfth century, is well worth a visit for its rooftop walks and impressive defences. Pirou Plage is a thriving holiday resort and the centre of the shellfish industry in a region which takes advantage of the highest tides in Europe to produce half of France’s shellfish. Tractors trundle through the village street and across the golden beach to the oyster and mussel beds at low tide, returning with their catch and usually a load of seaweed, the natural fertiliser of the local fields. There is a splendid market on Sunday mornings.
A number of excellent restaurants can be found at Pirou-Plage. What better place for your last dinner in the area?
Day 5
BAYEUX and home.
What’s to see at
Bayeux? Well, yes, the Tapestry, of course. The French call it
‘La Tapisserie de la Reine Mathilde’, we call it the Bayeux
tapestry; needless to say, it was not made by Queen Matilda, it did
not originate in Bayeux and it isn’t a tapestry. It’s an
embroidered strip cartoon, probably produced in England soon after
the conquest, and designed as propaganda to legitimise William’s
claim to the English crown. I especially like the bit where the two
armies are preparing for battle; the English have weapons and food,
the Normans have weapons and wine.
Nevertheless, there’s a
lot more to see in Bayeux; an excellent Battle of Normandy museum
next to the vast Commonwealth War Cemetery; a Cathedral which reads
from bottom to top like a history of Norman architecture; a host of
small museums and galleries, a lace museum and very good shopping .
Bayeux was the luckiest town in Normandy in 1944; liberated on the
evening of D-day, it suffered practically no damage in an area where
most towns were completely destroyed. A maze of medieval streets can,
therefore, still be explored.
From Bayeux, North Americans have only a half-hour drive to Caen and the train for Paris. UK visitors have a choice of ways home: Caen to Portsmouth with Brittany Ferries or Le Havre to Portsmouth with P&O. Le Havre is a longer journey, but you can take in Deauville, Honfleur and the spectacular Pont de Normandie before catching the overnight ferry.
La Hague
Granville