In their footsteps.....

Maybe it was the cider. I had a whole bottle last night at dinner, and not a small bottle either. Normandy is famous for its cider, actually for it's apples in general and the cider is really good. At any rate, yours truly got into my head that I wanted to walk in the footsteps of the British soldiers who landed at the beach and marched to Bayeux. A quick conversation with the hotel owner and then it is all set. Taxi ride to Arromanches, the left side of Gold where the Brits landed and a couple of trails back.
As I mentioned, all the awesome women here for the horse show encouraged me. One even asking if I would bring back some sand for her to keep.

As I was looking at the map last night, I realized Arromanches has a street named after Admiral Mountbatten. That confused me as while I do not know too much after WWII history I was pretty sure the Admiral was the Supreme Allied Commander for SE Asia, not Europe-although I think he was a sore loser to Eisenhower for the job. As I approached Arromanches, you could see big boxes of metal floating in the sea. As the taxi stopped at the beach, I could see a half dozen or so on the beach. The beach is huge at low tide and this morning at least had lots of walkers, many going up to the big metal boxes, covered in seaweed and rust and laying their hands on the metal.

I learned that Arromanches was the location of Port Winston where in the days after DDay, the British constructed a huge port so that and moved 2 million men to the shores. The local museum had a miniature set up of the Mulberry harbor - which was impressive in miniature and must have been an amazing site of engineering to see in all it's glory. The remains are still pretty impressive 70 years on.
The trip to the Museum of Debarquement also explained the Mountbatten reference. Apparently in 1942 when plans for a landing at Normandy after the Dieppe invasion he made a comment that if Normandy did not have a deep water port, the British should just build one. There also were quotes from Churchill who said that the port would need to deal with the huge tides and that somehow the problems would need to be overcome. Helpful to those of use visiting 70 years later was a huge room filled with 100 feet of dioramas that showed the metal boxes all linked together and the big ships docking and driving their cargo over metal bridges to the shore. There is a photo of some soldiers moving bicycles ashore this way, through the surf.
The museum also plays tribute to all the nations with troops on the ground that morning so I added Greece, Denmark and Czechoslovakia to the list of names I previously know.
After the museum, we hiked up to the cliffs above the town where German guns were placed in D-Day. Now it is a beautiful view of both Arromanches and the beach to the right which I think is where the Canadians landed. You could almost imagine the huge military presence from that pinnacle.
The tourist office supplied yet another possible route and the hike back to Bayeux began. The French countryside is filled with farmland so cows and horse where constant company as were fields filled with corn. It was a non eventful trip to Reyes where the big discovery was a church where William of Normandy had fled after his father died. William, although his father's heir was also a bastard and there was a power struggle for the throne of Normandy in the 1040s.

From Reyes where paths are well marked, we somehow made a wrong turn and up adding about 4 km to the trip. Ultimately back on the right path, the cathedral towers were a welcome sight.
All told it was only 15 km and of course today was warm and sunny but at least briefly, the walk was in the footsteps of the liberators.