Tuesday morning a funny thing happened to us on the way to the Caen War Memorial Museum. It would get a lot less funny over the next couple of days.  It so happens we timed our visit in Normandy with a strike the local farmers had scheduled to protest low milk prices or some such thing.

So when farmers strike in rural France what they do is drive their huge tractors and combines and such and block off the major interstate entrance and exit ramps. Of course, we had no clue what was going on and there we are proudly showing off our newly acquired french driving skills when we run into this huge traffic jam.  So we come to a complete stop for a while.  Finally drivers get out and start walking up and down the interstate so I figure I will join in as well.  I get out and approach this older french lady and proudly give her my best parlez-vous anglais.  She looks at me like I’m from another planet but points for me to follow her.

So we back up and turn around go down the wrong way of an entrance ramp.  We get to the bottom planning to turn right and thwart the best efforts of the horrible farmers and what do we see?  They had dumped what appears to be many truckloads of fresh cow manure under the viaduct sealing up our exit.  So we had no choice but to go the other way and program the gps to find a major detour around Caen.  That cost us the rest of our first morning in Normandy.

Finally we did make it to the musuem, had lunch and did the tour.  Following that we went a few miles out towards the beach to the Pegasus Bridge which was the first bridge captured by the allies the night of D-Day.  If you have seen the Longest Day the story of the bridge in portrayed in the movie.

The Pegasus Bridge. This is actually a replica – the original is in a museum behind this spot.

This cafe was also there on the night of the invasion and was owned by a member of the French resistance. He was the one who let the Allies know the Germans had rigged the bridge with explosives and would blow it up in event of capture. We had afternoon snacks there, my first authentic French madeleines – they were wonderful.

Next stop was the German battery at Longues Sur Mer, also in the movie. Installations like this were part of Hitler’s Atlantic wall and still dot the Normandy coastline. This particular one had some of it’s gun’s sited on Gold Beach in one direction and Omaha in the other.  It is very chilling to see these installations and contemplate what happened here.

German battery at Longues Sur Mer.

Our last stop Tuesday evening was the seaside town of Arromanches, the site of Gold Beach. This is one of the two sites where the allies built the artificial Mulberry Harbors to bring in the many tons of supplies needed following the landings.  The remnants of the artificial harbor can still be seen in Arromanches.  The story of how these enormous harbors were conceived, built in England, towed across the channel and assembled under fire is one of the great stories and success factors of the invasion.  Read up on it sometime.

Looking from the German batteries over to Arromanches (Gold Beach). The objects in the water are the remnants of original huge Mulberry artificial harbor built there in the days following the invasion.

I couldn’t get a good angle on the Mulberries up close but here are a couple shown at low tide at Arromanches. Some of these were as big a football field. The engineering undertaken was incredible.  You really should read up on it!

After the war Arromanches returned to a peaceful seaside resort town. On the morning of June 6, 1944 it was anything but.

That night we had dinner at a sidewalk cafe overlooking the beach, with one of the old mulberries not a hundred yards from us.  The Moules & Frites (mussels and fries) were great!

Back in Bayeux we stopped at a local creperie for late night dessert crepes and then took in a light show at the Cathedral.

The light show at the cathedral.