On Thursday morning we woke up with a mission to see as much of Normandy as we could in two days. First of all we checked out the local bakery in Cambremer - we're getting a bit fussy these days and the verdict was that the croissants were a bit overdone - then the information centre to see what we could do in Normandy.
There are at least a month's worth of museums, memorial and D-Day sites along the Normandy coast, all with their own focus and point of interest. We decided to start with the big Memorial Museum in Caen itself. It was absolutely outstanding. In the book it had suggested leaving at least 4-5 hours to see the museum ... yeah right we thought, but we were there for all of that, and some. The main exhibition was a timeline beginning with the descent into World War 2, basically from the end of World War 1. It described the various political and economic factors that contributed to the war. Then it stepped through how the war progressed and who got involved and when and why and what happened at each step. The audio-guides (which were recommended but we only got them for the kids at the beginning to keep them quiet... then went back to get ours after we listened to the first recording) were fabulous, offering a lot more information than the static displays, but even the static displays were very creative and engaging. It was fascinating, and at times disturbing, to learn about the war in so much detail. There has obviously been a huge amount of thought and consideration given to the presentation and it is very fair and unbiased, quite matter-of-fact and non-political. Bad decisions or personal faults by any person on any side were reported with no particular emphasis or judgement. The stated goal of the museum is to educate people with a view to promoting peace, and I think it has been achieved very well. Katriel lasted about half an hour with her audio guide then she'd had enough, but the museum offers a creche/childminding service for children up to 10 years old, for free. It was quite secure with sign in/out procedures (and I had to wear a badge so that they could find me if they needed to), and Katriel had a wonderful time doing crafts and playing with the dolls and making friends with some little American girls who were there as well. It really did allow us to wander along at our own pace and read and listen and watch. There were several movies that played throughout the day, and there were separate exhibitions on D-Day (Jour J in French!) and the Normandy landings, and also developments from WW2 onwards. We stayed until the creche closed at 6pm, and even then I had to run to get Katriel as we hadn't quite finished looking at the displays. Absolute highest recommendation to go there if ever you get the opportunity - go early in the day and expect to spend the whole day.
When we got back to Cambremer we spent a while poring over the Normandy visitor guide to see what our priorities would be for Friday.
Cambremer is another cute little rural French village. It has all the necessary components of a French village - bakery, butcher, church (with bell), restaurant, pharmacy, hairdresser and florist. Even in a village of a few hundred people, they'll have all these things. In St-Gengoux (population 1000-odd) there were three florists!
Roads in France go from one extreme to the other. There are motorways all over the place, the main ones could be 4 lanes each way and traffic races along at 130km/hr. The minor motorways are still very good quality, maybe 2 lanes each way but easy driving. Then once you start getting close to your destination you turn off the motorway onto a network of tiny lanes, not quite two cars wide, to take you to your final destination.
On Friday we had a list of 3 or 4 main things we wanted to see. We first went up to Crisbecq, around up towards Cherbourg. There was a battery there - gun emplacement with shelters etc - which Peter's grandfather (RAF Lancaster bomber pilot) had flown a mission to the night before D-Day. There were two 210mm guns plus a number of 155mm guns, and there had been about 300 people stationed there. The casemates (big concrete housing for the guns) had 3.5m of steel-reinforced concrete on each side & top and were just massive. The 'museum' was actually a guided walk through the base, and into the various buildings and shelters, which was really interesting. You could see some of the bomb and shell damage (where half a metre of concrete had been chipped off) and in some of the bulidings there were actual relics found at the site on display. Some of the buildings had bullet holes in the concrete at the entrance from when it had been attacked. It was interesting to see pictures of how they had tried to disguise the battery as a village by etching on the concrete to look like bricks, painting verandahs and decks and curtains, putting fake peaked roofs (rooves?) on the concrete buildings etc. Cunning.
We then came back around the coast towards Omaha Beach and stopped at La Pointe du Hoc, which is this amazing little point out into the ocean that was stormed by a group of American commandos on D-Day. There are big cliffs on both side of this point and the Americans used ropes and ladders and climbing equipment to get up, while under fire from the Germans up on the top. 225 Americans had arrived on the ground there, 150 made it to the top but they had to wait 2 more days for reinforcements to arrive and they were down to 90 by then. The whole point was covered in big craters from the bombs, and there were bomb shelters and various gun emplacements to explore as well. It was a pretty amazing story, and the craters just created such a visual image it was quite striking.
We had other things we would have liked to see but by this time we were running out of day, so our last visit was to the American military cemetery overlooking Omaha beach. The cemetery has just under 10,000 graves and it is quite overwhelming and brings a lump to your throat to stand and look over white crosses lined up perfectly as far as the eye can see. There were heaps of visitors there (lots of Americans not surprisingly). The grounds are immaculately kept, and there is a very large memorial at the top of the main walkway. Evidently the visitors centre at the entrance is very interesting and informative, but unfortunately we didn't have enough time to check it out.
We headed back to Cambremer to pack up and tidy up ready to move to Paris tomorrow!
Although we had hoped to spend more time in Normandy we felt that we'd seen some really good examples of the D-Day sites around, and had learned an enormous amount about the war.
Grrrrr This is about my sixth attempt to get this comment done - on a tablet using a hokey wirelesss connection in invercargill!
ReplyDeleteNormandy sounds amazing and emotional. I would never have guessed there was a full days visit there.
That candy floss Katriel ate was enormous. Something that big would need resource consent in New Zealand!