D-Day Tours & Bike Riding Part 2

So we moved into Bayeux for 5 days, possibly 6 and we are in heaven. Although it might appear modest this place is sweet.

The washroom is like a trailer washroom with just enough room for a sink, toilet and shower. A room with free wifi... how can you complain!

Bayeux is in Normandy, and we are reminded everywhere about the D-Day invasion. When we got to Bayeux we saw Canadian, British and of course French flags everywhere, which symbolize the liberators of the region. Flags of the liberators fly year round for a lot of the northern french towns - each town flies the flag of its particular liberator - and every year on June 6 there are huge D-Day liberation celebrations.

Here is a picture of a street in Bayeux with multiple flags flying.

May 26 (Wednesday) we took a tour of the Canadian D-Day sites. Here the eastern section of Juno Beach in the town of St. Aubin. Many Canadian soldiers died against this wall. They were supposed to land on grassier, unfortified portions of beach to the west, but the storms pushed them to this unfortunate landing point, which was subject to fortified batteries and machine gun fire.

Here is the Canadian cemetery, where only about 50% of the Canadians that died on D-Day are buried. On each grave there is the name of the soldier, his age, date of death, regiment and a few lines that were given to each family. Andrew and I were very touched by the entire tour, but this part especially because of the huge size of the graveyard (over 2,500 graves), the ages of the Canadians that had died (so many were 19, and in their early 20s) and the personalized lines written by the families of the fallen men. We were told that the Canadian and British graveyards are different than the American because plants and flowers can be planted on the graves and because of the lines given by each family. The personalized words really made brought the loss home to us. Beside some graves there were even pictures of the soldiers and stories about them.

Our guide told us that this grave site has the most sets of brothers in it. He told us a story of 3 brothers all who died within June 6 -11 1944, which means their mother would have received 3 telegrams together to inform her of the deaths of her sons.

We also learned that the Canadian forces were very well respected as soldiers.  Canada was the only country on D-Day that could boast of having a force completely composed of volunteers.

This is in the backyard of an abbey (Abbaye d’Ardenne) outside of a small town where 11 Canadian soldiers were taken prisoner and than brutally executed. This is the monument dedicated to them. The German officer in charge refused to take prisoners, and demanded that any captured men be brought to the garden and killed. This site is very well known due to the atrocities committed in the garden.

The tour was very informative and Andrew and I really appreciated it. It was really hard to hear about the brutalities of war, but we are really glad that we were able, if even for a moment, to appreciate the soldiers who, so selflessly, gave up EVERYTHING, and those who went back home after fighting for peace.

I think that November 11 will have a really special meaning for Andrew and I now, and that we will start to give it the proper respect that it deserves.

So, biking round 2... Andrew and I didn't have a tour planned but we wanted to go and see some more WWII sites that were 10-15 kms out of Bayeux. The French bus drivers were on strike (not really surprised...) so we decided to bike. That's right we were going to give this biking thing another try.

We biked off to Arromanches (10 kms from Bayeux), which was a huge harbour brought over from Britain in prefabricated pieces and assembled on a beach that the British liberated on D-Day (the first harbour of its kind, and it was not known whether it would even work). The harbour is one of the primary reasons that D-Day was a success, because without it, it would not have been possible for the Allied forces to bring in supplies - the D-Day beaches were chosen primarily because there were NOT harbours, which were heavily fortified and liberated days to weeks after D-Day, from behind. 

This is a diorama of the harbour. Each inch on the diorama is 100 feet. The harbour was 3 1/2 miles by 1 1/2 miles. Huge ships docked at the harbour, and causeways allowed trucks and tanks, etc, to drive between the ships and the shore. Massive slabs of concrete each weighing more than the Eiffel tower were brought over and partially sunk in order to serve as breakwaters.

Reminents of the harbour.

Next we biked off to the "Batterie de Longues-sur-Mer" (6 kms) which was a German battery, and part of the Atlantic Wall. It was really creepy to go right up to these guns and inside of these bunkers (there were several), but what was even more disturbing was that French kids (ages 12-14) were on a school trip, and they didn't see the sadness of these guns, but rather saw them as jungle gyms. So kids were screaming and laughing and playing around instead of paying respect to the lives that were lost because of these machines (these guns caused a lot of problems on D-Day as they were close to Utah, Omaha and Gold beaches). This is the only battery in Normandy to still have its guns.

Here is a view of the other bunkers.

After another sad day we decided to stop at the Bayeux public park to have a snack. These parks are totally beautiful. There was this tree, called the Bayeux Beech, which was made by grafting 2 different species together (trunk and limbs). It only survived because of the city's TLC - because it can't support its' own weight there are 5 massive posts and an extensive network of cables running from them that support the tree's limbs.

After a visit to the city park we went to Britain's cemetery. There were so many graves, we couldn't believe it. Some of the lines on the graves really stood out to us here, especially one written by a mother to her only son, and another from a family who asked for someone in a foreign land to plant flowers in in front of the grave. Again, it was evident at how many lives were lost and so, so sad.

Although the cemeteries are very sad it is really nice to see how well they are being taken care of. They are in amazing shape and they are so beautiful with gorgeous trees and shrubs.

Biking was definitively a success, we spent 7 hours on the bikes and are talking about going biking again... maybe tomorrow!

Today, May 28, we got on the train to go to Mont St. Michel, an abbey on the top of a hill with a fortified village below. 

It was a gorgeous site and really enjoyed learning about churches, abbeys and Mont St Michel in particular.

The views were great.

I'm still missing Ireland, but we are getting this whole France thing down. We have found our new Dunnes, called Marche Plus+, and my new chocolate chip muffins have become trays of brownies (nothing compared to G'mas brownies though!!). We are trying out several different varieties of wine (all red though) which we are still managing to get for under 1 euro 50 cents. We are also trying out different cheeses (we finally found out what they call cheddar here), and the baguettes are amazing. We have caught a few tennis matches on TV (the French Open is on right now) and we are enjoying playing crib nightly.