Week 5 – Paris and then home

Our trip is at an end, and tomorrow morning we pack our bag for the final time, throw on our back packs, and pull our case to the Saint Germain Des Pres metro station, to catch the train to Charles De Gaulle, to start the long flight home. 

We arrived in Paris on Monday morning to drop the car off at Peugeot.  What the GPS said was a 25 minute trip, turned out to be an hour, as unplanned for roadworks meant the trip was bumpier, slower and longer than expected.  Fortunately, the car played ball and didn’t run out of petrol – you return it empty not full.  As we got right into the centre of Paris, the roads widened, the pace quickened, the road signs deserted, and it was something of a wholly unsavoury mugging by scooters, trucks and taxis, all with more idea of where they were going, how to get there, and more need to be there quicker than we did.  A complete circuit round the Arc de Triomphe was once again the highlight of the journey into the centre of Paris.

We have spent the last 3 days walking the main sights of Paris – the Arch, the Champs Elysees, Place de la Concorde, and the Eiffel tower – our feet might never be the same again.  Our 3 nights at the Hotel La Perle, have been as brilliant as they were the last time we were here, with all the narrow streets full of restaurants, bars and boutique shops.  We’ve tried a few of the restaurants and bars, and have one more to try out tonight.

Until the next time.

Cheers,

David & Anne.

End of Week 4 – The Loire to Versailles

In the last few days, we’ve been to a chateau, a local town market, an American BBQ, camped through two of the most amazing electrical storms we’ve ever experienced, eaten a meal we’ve waited 5 years to repeat, finished camping and moved to the outskirts of Paris – busy, exciting, and sometimes frightening. 

The chateau was at Chaumont.  This is another chateau that had been in private ownership, but was taken over by the state when the owners ran into financial difficulty in the 1930’s.  Today the chateau is also known for it international garden exhibition that exists within its grounds.  People are invited to create an exhibit, and this year there are 25 of them for us to wander around.  Like most artistic ventures, there was some real gold, and some not so inspiring stuff, but our favourites are shown in the photos.  It was a good couple of hours wandering round different garden settings. 

The Chateau itself was quite interesting, for a big house.  There were of course, some very nice rooms, but continuing the arty theme of the place, there was also an art exhibition in the disused (and entirely run down) part of the chateau.  The art was essentially photographs made into led light stained glass panel that were hung in front of windows in these unused rooms.  While the art was interesting enough, it was interesting to see what happens to these massive houses, when the upkeep gets too much, and the family retreats to much smaller well kept parts of the chateau.

The highlight of lunch was being told off by a very officious, French speaking, young woman on a horse.  We had bought a filled roll, and were sitting on a small wall beside a nice lawn, actually we were sitting over the fence on the grass, which despite the fact that the Chateau had acre after acre of grass, you weren’t allowed on the grass, so we thought she was telling us off for having the audacity for putting out bottoms on the grass, but then in turned out that there was a reserved area at the back of a building for people to eat their sandwiches, and we had to go there, so as not to make the place look untidy.

The French town markets are always enjoyable, and different areas obviously have different local flavours, some are little more than the local retailers moving their goods onto tables out onto the street (Bayeux), but others are a real mish mash of local producers, artists, crafts people who come together in a different town each day to sell their wares.  The best ones are in the South of France – Provence and the Dordogne, because there you do get such a wide range of things on offer – particularly art.

The market we visited this time was in Loches, about 30ks down the road.  This market covered most of the centre of the town, and had lots of fish, meat, cheese, bread stalls, some clothes, jewellery, and hand bags.  The highlight for me was seeing that they sold dead pigeons – it seemed the only good thing to do with pigeons, which are still occupying too much of my attention at the start and end of each day.  Anne bought a nice scarf and a handbag in the market, which was cool.

Lunch was interesting, in that we chose the restaurant, requested our usual table for two outside, and sat down to wait for the menu to arrive.  Next thing, the entrée arrives, then the main, finally desert and coffee.  We didn’t realise, but the restaurant only had a set menu – it was a one man band operating everything, and all we had to do was order the pitcher of wine.  As luck would have it, the lunch was very good, and probably the most reasonably priced food we’ve eaten on the holiday.

Evenings at the camp ground have been interesting.  It starts off with the hot air balloons that float over us every night.  The first night, there was only one, but since then, business has been up, and on a couple of nights we saw 5 of them.  Then one night, the campground put on an American BBQ, and a musician, so we went along to that.  The BBQ was good, and the musician excellent.  For some reason, we got front row seats – it might have been that it started at 7:00pm, which is very early for us.  It was a very enjoyable evening, good food, good music, and we got to meet the Dutch family that are camping next to us.

Then there are the electrical storms – Amazing!  They start about 3am, with Continuous thunder and lightning, rain, and on the second night, really strong winds.  Night one, we were woken by the thunder, which coincided with the rain starting, and carried on for a couple of hours.  Night two, I could see the lightning off in the distance, and the thunder was barely audible.  Anne was awake, there was no wind, so being an aspiring Jim Hickey, I said, “it’s miles away, it should pass us by”.  Queue the wind, which we thought was going to blow the tent away.  That got things moving, and sure enough the storm arrived minutes later.  It was interesting watching the lightning start off visible through the wall of the tent at our feet, then start lighting up the whole roof of the tent, then migrate on to the wall behind our heads.  We wondering about going and sitting in the car to watch the show, but we would have got drenched getting to the car, and anyway, we were well protected by our tent – right?  After the first incident of rain, we don’t have anything in the tent at night, because the water gets in under the tent – nothing gets wet, as long as it isn’t on the floor of the tent, and if it’s in the car, then it’s not on the floor of the tent.  All our bedding, and us, is on top of the air bed, so it doesn’t get wet at all. Morning dawns to blue skies both days – amazing !

The two electrical storms came on the last two nights we had planned to camp, so it did have a benefit in that the tent got a good wash before we had to pack it up in preparation for getting it back through NZ Customs.  A couple of hours in the morning, and the tent was dried out and packed up.  Saturday night was spent in Amboise, the scene of one of the most enjoyable lunches I’ve ever had, 5 years ago, and we were keen to go back to re-live the experience.  The highlight was the delightfully named Geese Gizzard salad, and much to my delight, the item was still on the menu, and also much to my delight, the experience was as enjoyable as I recalled it 5 years ago.  Anne’s meal was also very enjoyable, but she went for more traditional fare than the Geese Gizzard salad.

First night back in a hotel and of course there was no electrical storm.  The receptionist at the hotel was full of stories about the amazing storm they had endured the night before, and was then pretty gob smacked when we advised that we had been camping just down the road that night.

Tonight we are in a hotel in Versailles, and drop the car off tomorrow morning, and have 3 nights in Paris, before heading back home on Thursday.  I’ll get one more blog post in before we leave. 

Start of Week 4 – The Loire

Eat, chateau, eat, chateau, eat, sleep, eat, chateau, eat, chateau, eat, sleep, could sum up our time in the Loire so far.  More importantly, we are back camping, and last night (Tuesday night) it rained.  Thunder, lightning and rain is forecast for Thursday and Friday nights, which are our last two nights of camping.  This fact and forecast is bringing into question my statement “camping is fun, as long as you can chose”.  The question is, when to chose.  We survived last night no problems, the tent coped well, and any inconveniences caused by it still being raining this morning, can be sorted out by a slight change of plan at night – more stuff in the car before it starts to rain.  But the question is, when does it stop being fun and start being an endurance quest.  I know some people who would be screaming “Harden up” at their computer right now.  Anne has just returned from washing the wine glasses and decided that we are sticking it out, so there’s that topic over with.

So there is the good news – wine is on the way, as I type, prior to us heading off to dinner in the campground.  Last night, we got involved in the music quiz, with a retired couple from York.  We didn’t know there was a quiz on, but once we were there and been asked to team up, what could we say.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and as long as the music stayed in the 80’s or earlier, we were ok, and ended up 3^rd for the evening.  The winners, who didn’t get a prize, seemed a bit dodgy, given that they were pre-natal group friends of the owners, one of the owners was on their team, and the other owner was running the quiz – we was robbed.

So far we have visited 3 chateaus – Chambord, Cheverney and Loches, and also taken in market day in Loches, so not quite the 4 that I mentioned above, but who’s counting.  We will do our 4^th tomorrow.  We have been to the Loire several times before, but have always tended more to the western end of the river, so this time we are further east, and concentrating on seeing new Chateaus. 

Chambord was an architectural marvel, but a residential disaster – no mind, we weren’t being asked to live there.  Nonetheless, it seems to have spent its entire existence having been a rarely used hunting lodge by the king of France.  Once Versailles was built, and the Kings started going there, it was largely forgotten, although there were various restorations and upgrades made to it.  Since it has been taken over by the state and open to the public, it is treated as a national treasure.  While it is an architectural marvel, with all it’s symmetry, it’s round towers, spiral stair cases and the like, it is also hugely frustrating because its symmetry is at a macro level, at a micro level, nothing is a like.  Windows, exterior decoration, roofs etc on different sides of the chateau all get different treatments, so as a say, at a high level it looks perfect, when you look at the detail it doesn’t quite stack  up.  I say it was a residential disaster, because it is built entirely of sand stone, there isn’t a room in it that has a wooden floor or ceiling, so for the first centuries of its life, it was freezing cold in winter, and mosquito ridden in summer.  There were some residential appartments that have been restored to the way they would have been back in the day, which was good to see.  The Chateau also had some interesting video clips to talk us through its history and architecture. 

Anyway, we had an enjoyable couple of hours there walking all over the insides and battlements of the chateau.

The Loire is the first place on our trip that we have seen sun flowers, and they are out in all the splendour where ever we go.  They are just the happiest of flowers and it’s always great to see their heads up following the sun during the day.  Their heads were hung a bit low this morning, weighed down by the weight of the rain that fell overnight, but it’s still great to drive along with them in the fields beside you.

After Chambord, we headed off to Cheverny – our next chateau.  This was a totally different kettle of fish.  It is someone’s house.  The family has owned it for 600 years.  They live in apartments on the top floor, but the rest of the house is open to the public everyday except for Christmas and New Year’s day.  The rooms are all very ornately decorated, and unfortunately for us, when we were there there must have been about 500 people going single file through what is a very large house.  It was still very much shoulder to shoulder, and with the temperature hitting the low 30’s it was really hot.  

End of Week 3 –The American Military Museum and Le Mans

Today we visited the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, which is the American cemetery for the soldiers who lost their lives in WWII, primarily in the D-Day invasions.  The Cemetery is located in Colleville-sur-Mer, at the top of a cliff overlooking Omaha Beach.  Similar to the Commonwealth Cemeteries, it is kept in pristine condition, with crosses to mark the bodies of the soldiers, and a long wall with the names of soldiers whose bodies were never found. 

As you arrive at the cemetery, you get the option of either visiting the cemetery, or going to the visitor centre.  We chose to visit the cemetery first, and see the memorial, the chapel and walk around amongst some of the graves.  We went to find the grave of Theodore Roosevelt, the Son of the President of the same name, who was the only General to land at the time of the initial landing, onto Utah Beach, and gave the command to get going with the war, even though tides had meant that they had landed two miles away from their expected landing spot.  He died a month later, of a heart attack at the age of 57.

We also saw two graves side by side that had a small American flag under each one.  I went to have a look, and saw that they were two brothers, Robert and Preston Niland, who were killed a day apart from one another – Robert on D-Day, Preston the day after.  We  later learned that this was the family that the fictional movie Saving Private Ryan was based on.  In real life, the third brother who was missing in the Pacific was later found in a Japanese POW camp.

After visiting the Cemetery, we went to the visitor centre, which was fascinating, and contained many of the statistics about the D-Day landings, and the logistics of how the whole operation was put together.  There was also a film interviewing Dwight Eisenhower, and there was a film about 3 particular soldiers who had been part of D-Day and their personal stories.

On Sunday, we transitioned to the Loire, and seeing an opportunity to do something new that was a possible means of getting there, we stopped for the night at Le Mans, home of the famous 24 hour race.  This was a change from our original plan, as we had planned to go to Brittany before the Loire, but once we got to Europe, and discovered all the things there were to do around the WWI sites, and the Normandy beaches, and indeed Normandy itself, we decided to drop Brittany and take more time in the other places.

The Le Mans race has been going since 1923, and we spent a couple of hours visiting the museum there, which is right beside the race track.  The Museum had an impressive display of vintage cars, as well as many of the wining cars from about the last 20 years.  We weren’t able to see the race track because there were some local bike races going on that day.  We spent the evening in a hotel in the centre of Le Mans, catching the start of the last stage of the Tour de France, and going to a local restaurant.  The last stage of the TdF left from Versailles, which is where we will be staying next Sunday night, so it was nice to get a reminder of how beautiful the Palace and the gardens at Versailles are.

The drive from Normandy all the way through to the Loire, was on the great French motorway system, which although you have to pay for some parts of it, is a great way to cover large distances in a very short space of time.  The charges tend to act as limiting factor on the amount of traffic that use it, and for the pace that you are able to maintain, and the fact that you can get directly from A to B without having to crawl through all those wonderful little French towns, it really is money well spent.  Compared to the quality of the roads we encountered in the Neterlands and Belgium and the roads we have experienced in Germany in the past, there really is something to be said to paying tolls to use a road.

Week 3 – Friday 19th July – The Tapestry, and the Battle of Normandy Memorial Museum

We’ve been staying in a campground 7ks outside of Bayeux for the past 5 days, and although we’ve been into, through or around Bayeux everyday since we’ve been here, we haven’t as yet managed to see the Bayeux Tapestry – The medieval story of how William the Conqueror took over the throne of England.  Now, I have to confess that I was on a bit of a hiding to nothing here, because Anne had rolled her eyes around in her head whenever I’d mentioned that we’d go and see the Tapestry, and I must confess that other than “we’re in the hood”, I didn’t really have a compelling reason to go and see it.  Sure I’d studied it a bit when I was trying to learn Latin at High School, and Mum had talked a lot about it at the same time, but beyond that, my only knowledge of it came when Stephen Fry did one of his Qi programs on it, about a week before we left.  That increased my knowledge of it vastly to the point that I now knew that it wasn’t a tapestry, and it probably wasn’t produced in Bayeux.

So, off we went into Bayeux to visit its famous tapestry.  Surprise number 1 – it is popular.  There was a queue of people waiting to see it, and we had to wait for other people while they followed the story on the tapestry.  Surprise number 2 – it was really interesting – Anne had to concede that it was well worth the trip and we learnt an awful lot about the tapestry, the characters in it, who made it, and a bunch of other really useful information. 

The story so far:

The year is 1064, Edward the Confessor was the King of England, who had no successors.  He wanted William the Bastard, (a nephew I think) to succeed him, so he sent Harold off to France (Where William was the Duke of Normandy) to let William Know.  Harold got blown off course, and ended  up in the hands of some bad asses, and William had to negotiate his release (Remember that – William negotiated Harold’s release).  William and Harold then seemed to hit it off, and went off to do some conquesting in Brittany.  William Knighted Harold (Does him another good turn).  William makes Harold swear that he will honour Edward’s dying wishes and make William the king of England.  Harold returns to England, Edward dies, Harold takes over the throne (I think we all know who the bastard is now then).  William builds boats, provisions his army, sets sail for England, sets up camp just out of Hastings, and waits for Harold to show up (he’d been up in York seeing off another potential pretender to his throne).  The battle occurs, goes on for most of the day, ebbs and flows a bit, finally Williams men seize the initiative, kill Harold through the eye, William wins the battle, and is crowned a somewhat unpopular King of England, and becomes William the Conqueror from that day forward.  There endeth the Tapestry.

Anyway, that is the fairly irreverent 21^st century male version.  In the 11^th Century, the story was told to some woman, who were so consumed with the story, that they started sewing it into their tea towels.  “oooh, what did he do then?  No!” stitch, stitch, stich, stich, stich.  By the time they had finished, these distinguished craftswoman had created a 70m work of art, that through the centuries has been coveted, abused, hidden from invaders, displayed in cathedrals, confiscated by dictators, restored and now presented for all the public to see in a tightly environment controlled atmosphere.

The tapestry was apparently commissioned by Bishop Odo, William’s half brother, and the Bishop of Bayeux.  He was part of the conquering party, but being a Bishop, he couldn’t draw blood, he was however allowed to use a mace to knock people senseless, so I took a bit of a liking to him – seemed a bit of a conflicted character – religious, but violent – but ultimately had his heart in the right place when you look at the story from the side of the winner.  The Tapestry (embroidery) is on 70 “screens”, although it is hard to tell where one stops and starts, and you only get a bit of an indication by the numbering at the top of the sheet.

As well as the tapestry, there was also some very interesting exhibitions, which taught us that William struggled to take control of England, and had to introduce the Feudal system into England to keep the peasants under control.  They also did some really amazing stuff – built heaps of buildings that stand to this day (if not somewhat altered) – the Tower of London, Winchester Abbey, loads of other Cathedrals and things.  Also created the Doomsday book, which despite its sinister sounding name, is a record of land ownership in England from the time – a most rare and precious book for historians. Anyway, a great exhibition, well worth a look if you get the chance.

After that, we visited the Battle of Normandy Memorial Museum.  This was another fascinating depiction.  Each place puts a slightly different perspective on part of the conflict, and this Museum focused on the roles and attitudes of the Generals on both sides of the conflict.  It also had a really interesting section of General De Gaulle, what a visionary he was, how he took the lead of the French fight from London, even though he was sentenced to death for treason by the “official French Government”, how he gathered together a fighting force for France the fought in Africa, Italy, and the Finally in France for the liberation of their country.  Tying together the whole Bayeux theme, was the a film which ended with a quote from the Bayeux Memorial in British Cemetery just over the road from the Museum.  It is written in Latin along the top of the Memorial, and the translation reads, “We, once conquered by William, have now set free the Conqueror’s native land”

Week 3 – Thursday 18th July – Arromanches-Les_Bains

Another big day today – only one place to visit, but a couple of things to do.  The D-Day beaches from East to West go – Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.  Arromanches is to the West of Gold, so between the American and the British beaches.  Arromanches was the site of one of the most remarkable engineering feats of the war, designed by an Engineer called Major Alan Beckett. 

The Allies needed to get access to a port, but the Germans held them all, and they were all heavily fortified.  The idea was developed of building a port in the UK and towing it to Normandy – a distance of 100 miles over seas.  Now remember that this was a complete port, to be built in a matter of days – Dover had taken 7 years to build.  To do that, the Brits had to build a 5 mile sea wall in 70 metre lengths, 6 storeys high.  They had to build docks for ships of various sizes and tonnages to moor up to, those docks had to be far enough out in the harbour to be deep enough for the ships, and they needed access roads to get the trucks off the docks onto land. 

The sea wall was built, and then sunk around the South Coast of Britain, so the Germans wouldn’t be able to see it from the air.  The access roads were built and supported on floating pontoons, so that they woud go up and down with the tide.

When D-Day started, and the beaches were secure, the job began to build the harbour.  The submerged sea walls had to be refloated, and towed – 4 tugs per section  - over the hundred miles of sea to Arromanches, the same with the access roads to the docks – all 13 kms of them.  On the journey over, they lost 40% of these road.  When construction at Arromanches was to start, 60 old warships were sunk to build a protective wall so that the work could carry on with some protection.  Then the sea wall had to be put in place.  This was sunk out in the bay, so that only the tops of it were still visible to create the sea wall, then the docks, then the access roads.  Within 10 days, they had a functioning port.  Two of these were built, one at Arromanches, one at Omaha Beach.  Then disaster struck.  The Normandy Coast was hit by the worst summer storm it had seen in 60 years.  The Omaha Beach harbour was destroyed, but Arromanches survived, but with damage.

Anyway, they got the port fixed and working, and although they only expected it to be used for 3 months it was infact used for 8 months because of the destruction the Germans did to the ports as they were run out of town.  Of the 8 months, the port unloaded over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tonnes of supplies.  It is still upheld as one of the best examples of Military Engineering.

Today, there are still about two dozen of the 215 sections of the sea wall still in place and visible, as well as the floating pontoons that supported the access roads, and one of the dock sections.  The remainder of the sea wall was re-floated in 1944 and taken to Holland to form the basis of some of the dykes they were building.  The Museum D’embarquement commemorates the port, the ingenuity that went into creating it, and the dedication that was required to build it – there was a war going on just off the beach at the time, remember.

When we went through the museum, there was a boy’s school group there at the same time – intermediate age, I guess, and they were getting a guided tour of the working of how the port worked, which we were lucky enough to be able to listen in on.  We heard one of the teachers saying that this was the 7^th year they had run this trip.  The kids certainly seemed to be enjoying it, and were very attentive during the presentation, and then at the movie that we saw afterwards.

The other attraction at Arromanches is a 360 degree movie – you’ve got 9 screen that completely enclose the audience.  The audience stands so that they are able to look around at what is going on on the different screens.  It sounds like it would be impossible to watch, but it is actually done very well, so you never miss out on anything.  This was a very professional presentation, made by the director of a French TV series call Apocalypse which is about WWII.  This is probably the best thing we’ve seen on the whole trip.  The movie started with just one screen showing Hitler in full flight addressing one of his rallies, and progressed through the development of WWI, the German take over of various countries, the Allies offensives in Italy, then the D-Day landing, the 100 day Normandy war, all the way through to De Gaulle saluting the Allied soldiers as they did their liberation parade up the Champs Elysee – stirring stuff.  It finished with shots of Arramanches and France today  in colour to show what things were like now.

Dinner was a picnic  in the campground from cold cuts of meat and salmon, a terrine, cheese, bread and wine – a good end to the day.

Week 3 – Wednesday 17th July – Sainte Mere Eglise, Utah Beach

A big day today, with us heading to firstly Sainte Mere Eglise, one the first towns to be liberated by allied troops (US Para troop Division) on D-Day 1944.  The town itself claims to be the first, but we’ve read of other towns also claiming to be the first, so we’re sticking with one of the first.  The town is on the N13, the main route on the Normandy Peninsular, so it was imperative that the Allies got control of this route before the landings started to thwart any German counter-offensives.  The spire on the town’s church is also the spire that para trooper John Steele got his parachute caught on, and had to play dead for two hours before he was captured by the Germans.  Fortunately for him, he escaped, survived the war, and made a number of returns to France, always to a warm welcome.  To this day, a mannequin (him) hangs on the side of the church, with the parachute caught over the steeple.

Beside the church is the airborne museum, which commemorates the airborn assault the allies launched on the Germans.  It is a fantastic museum, and we learned so much about the German Occupation and how the allies got their invasion going.  In doing this tour, we’ve learned a lot more of the detail of the wars and how and where they were conducted.  Up until now, all I’ve really known is that the war was in Europe and went from 1939 until 1945, so I assumed that it was all going on, all over the place, all of that time.  With this trip, we’ve learned that in fact the Germans invaded and became an occupying force in many countries, and that the Allies ran specific offensives against parts of the German lines. 

After the Germans occupied France, but couldn’t defeat Britain, they spent several years building the Atlantic Wall, along the coast of Norway, Holland, Belgium and France – 700 miles, I think.   This was a massive undertaking (But what else are you going to do when you’ve got a bunch of soldiers sitting around getting bored, and a local population that you can do with what you will), and involved a series of pill boxes, gun emplacements, and beach barricades.  It was built by Rommel, and he firmly believed that if the Germans could not stop an Allied assault, at the beaches, they would lose the war.

The Museum goes through various means that the Allies got men and equipment onto French soil, and is particularly focused on the first hours of the invasion, when the paratroop divisions dropped in from the skies, and secured key positions to enable the beach landings, and from there the push from Normandy to Paris, and on to Berlin.  The Battle is refered to as the 100 days of Normandy.

War is an amazing logistical exercise, and I never knew that troops and equipment were delivered into Normandy in gliders, as well as by parachute.  The Gliders were towed from the UK, and then released over Normandy where they would find a place to land.  Rommel knew that this was coming, and had put large stakes into all the paddocks, to catch and destroy any planes that tried to land there.  As a result of this, many soldiers lost their lives being impaled as their planes landed.  To understand the gamble the allies were taking, Eisenhower was expecting losses of 50% of all the Allied Troops which were under his command, and his detractors were picking losses of up to 80%.  Eisenhower was right, but not in a way that anybody would ever want to be.

The Museum had many personal letters from soldiers and their families posted after the war, which was very moving, and as a result we spent a lot of time reading these letters, which isn’t something I would normally do in a museum.  One of the most memorable was the one from John Steele, posted in 1964, after he had attended the 20^th Anniversary thanking the local people for the warm reception he always received.  The Museum is a great exhibitor of the many acts of personal bravery and sacrifice that were made on the day, and ultimately led to the Allied Victory.

From there it was on to Saint Marie Du Monte, and Utah Beach.  There are 5 beaches involved in the D-Day Landings Utah, Omaha, Juno, Gold and Sword.  The first two are American, the last three British.  The British are named based on random selections from the Dictionary, which is good practice.  The Americans however named there after a couple of their states, for varying reasons, and those names seem to be the most famous.  Saint Marie Du Monte is the town inland from Utah Beach, which became the scene of one of the initial engagement of D-Day between the US Para Troopers and the German occupiers.  It is 5ks from Utah Beach.  On the road between Saint Marie Du Monte and Utah Beech is a newly erected monument to Richard Winters who was the commander of the 506^th US Infantry Regiment, upon which the TV Series Band of Brothers was based.  We had watched the series before we came on the holiday, as part of our study and preparation, so were keen to see the monument to one of the outstanding leaders of the D-Day invasion. 

Utah Beach has several monuments to various US Military groups who served and sacrificed their lives on D-Day.  In addition, there is the Utah Beach D-Day Museum, which recounts the events of D-Day, the landings that occurred at Utah Beach in the 5 months following D-Day, in order to provision the supplies needed to support and army that was about to take on and conquer Europe.  The Museum was created by the man who was Mayor of Saint Marie du Monte from 1949 to 1991.  He was around on D-Day, and was mistakenly shot by the Americans.  Given a transfusion, shipped off to the states for further treatment and recuperation, he then set about creating a museum in one of the old German bunkers to honour the men who came to liberate France and the rest of Europe from the Germans. 

Utah Beach was hugely important in terms of being a supply point for the Allied forces.  From June to November 1944, the Allies landed 836,000 men, 220,000 vehicles ranging from jeeps to locomotives and 725,000 tonnes of supplies at Utah Beach.   

After Utah Beach, we headed to Pointe du Hoc, one of the key German defensive positions, located on top of a cliff.  The US Rangers had to use rope ladders to scale the cliff, at the cost of many lives, find the Germans had scarpered, track them down, and destroy their guns.  When they were relieved from duty several days after D-Day, the original 225 soldiers now numbered only 90.

Today was an awesome day, but I have to say it is a totally different experience to the WWI sites we have visited.  For a start, the technology had moved on remarkably in just 20 years, but more importantly, the stories here are about the start of a victory.  What began on 6 June 1944, would result a year later in the total surrender of the German Army, and while the battles were brutal and the costs in human lives horrendous, the results were always a push towards the end.  The WWI sites, covered 4 years, where there was total stalemate, mere yards were gained or lost with the cost of thousands of lives, and the battle was constantly ebbing and flowing.  The conditions the soldiers had to endure during WWI must have been the worst that have had to be endured over a sustained period for so little gain.  The museums at the WWI sites were sombre memorials to a futile battle, whereas the museums we have seen so far are as well as an honouring of the fallen soldiers, also a testament to the extraordinary ingenuity of local people, soldiers, generals and military strategists to overcome almost insurmountable odds to achieve an outcome.  Both sets of museums are amazing in what they teach about a period in history, but both are also totally different in terms of the time and war they portray