Petes-Pix: Paris & the Heart of Normandy

Day 5 – Monday 9 September 2024

There were two full day excursions to D-Day beaches, one to Caen Memorial Museum and the US Cemetery and Memorial overlooking Omaha Beach. Most passengers took this excursion.

We went on the Commonwealth excursion; unfortunately it was not possible to do both.

Both excursions left at 07:45. There were 21 people on the Commonwealth excursion, fourteen British, five Canadians, and two Americans who chose this tour because they thought it would be more historic. Our guide was a retired history professor of Tunisian birth. He’d come to Paris to study at university, met and married a local girl and they’ve lived in Paris since.

On the way we were given a Viking leaflet about D-Day with a colour map of the coast with beaches named and national flags showing where landings were, both on the beaches and inland at Pegasus Bridge, Merville and Ste-Mere-Eglise.

We arrived, with a 20 minute toilet stop on way, at Bayeaux at 10:00 to see the tapestry.

I had low expectations, but was very much impressed. (https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/)The 70 metre cloth is on a wall, lit in an otherwise dark room. There’s a wooden rail at which you stand to see it. On entry you are given a smartphone sized listening device in your language that explains each of the 55 numbered panels embroidered on the cloth. The panels tell in pictures, like a comic book, of William the Bastard’s conquest of King Harold at Hastings and how William subsequently became known as The Conqueror. Like propaganda the tapestry starts by laying out William’s perceived right to the throne of England.

(Note: According to the museum’s website “The Bayeux Tapestry Museum will close its doors to the public, for renovation work, from September 2025. Reopening planned for October 2027.”)

Then we had 40 minutes free time before we were guided to The Churchill Hotel (https://www.hotel-churchill.fr/en) and lunch in a private room off the restaurant. The meal was a starter of cheese in puff-pastry over a mixed salad, main of chicken breast in a mushroom sauce with potato cooked in cream, and dessert of lemon meringue tart, followed by coffee. There were opened bottles of a decent Blaye claret. But some people didn’t drink red wines, only white. I asked our guide to get a bottle of white wine, but he came back to say that the hotel said they had supplied what they were contracted with Viking to do and that white wine drinkers could buy a glass for €6. I thought that poor of Viking since those guests would have their choice if they stayed on board and I hope they made their feelings known in the cruise questionnaire. Meanwhile there was plenty of claret for us red wine drinkers.

WWII German bunker on dunes at Juno Beach

After lunch we left for a drive on the coast road above Gold & Juno beach. I particularly wanted to see the Mulberry Harbours, having been inside three of the smaller ones on a cruise earlier in the year, but the coach didn’t stop and I was on the side of the coach furthest from the sea. All the same I saw the massive black blocks in the sea. We stopped at the Juno museum and had a brief walk in the strong winds through dunes onto the beach.

Laying the floral tribute to Canadians

Then it was by coach to the Canadian cemetery where the five Canadians placed a (Viking supplied) floral tribute. Then to Benouville where just after midnight on 6 June 1944 three gliders landed troops very close to the bridges over the Caen canal, seized and held it against the Germans. That, and the nearby bridge over the Orne seized at the same time, were the only crossing points to the east of the Commonwealth landing beaches that could be used for a German counter-attack.

Horsa Glider reproduction at museum. Single use only, made of wood. Locals chopped up the ones that landed for firewood during the terrible cold winter of 1944

Pegasus Bridge - with its modern replacement seen behind trees being lifted

The bridge was renamed Pegasus by locals after the flying horse badges of the Allied glider troops. The bridge was replaced in 1994, but locals insisted it be a similar design and the actual bridge now lies next to the Pegasus Museum.

Laying the tribute at the British Cemetery

Lastly we went to the British military cemetery at Ranville (the first village to be liberated on D-Day) where a (Viking supplied) floral tribute was laid. We left at 16:55 and encountered heavy traffic, so it took two hours to get back to the boat.

It was a packed and moving day and I’d have liked to spend more time in the museums.