I slept a generous 10 hours last night...I guess I was more tired than I realized. My quad muscles were even more unhappy with me today than yesterday from the Aiguille du Midi flight. I’m not sure which aspect did more harm to them, the slow, perilous walk down the snowy spine or the 5 kilometre walk around town (both while wearing my paragliding backpack of about 40 pounds). Probably it was the combination...
The drive up towards Caen was quite pleasant, for parts of it I was the only one on a divided highway for a number of kilometres. As I neared Caen, the skies grew incredibly dark to the north and the south...uh oh, I’m heading south about 20 km to Bayeux for two reasons. The first being that Charles, my cousin Gemma’s husband, insisted more than once that I must visit the Bayeux Tapestry. Secondly, the museum of the Battle of Normandy is located in the small, medieval like city.
The dark clouds near Bayeux:
The cathedral in Bayeux:
First up, let’s do the tapestry...can’t disappoint Charles. Plus, after that, then I can focus on D-Day themed places. Oh, I also figured I could knock the tapestry out of the way in less than an hour. I can’t say a tapestry has ever entertained me for more than five minutes before so if it can do sixty, I’ll be impressed!
The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the story of a struggle to become the King of England between William (as in William the Conqueror) and Harold Godwinson’s struggle. When King Edward the Confessor died, he had no son or heir to the throne, Harold was sent by Edward to Normandy to tell William that the throne was his however on his return and after Edward’s death, Harold assumed the throne. Upon hearing this, William amassed an army, crossed the Channel and then defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings.
The tapestry:
And this was only one side...
Since literacy rates back some 8-900 years ago weren’t exactly stellar, it is thought that this monolithic (really mono-lengthic...it measures 68.38 meters in length!) tapestry could tell the tale to those who preferred to look at pictures (we all do a bit don’t we?!?). The tapestry, due to its age and years of mishandling, is now hermetically sealed behind glass and is housed in an old chapel but it is all darkened to help preserve this masterpiece. I received an audio guide and listened to the story as I walked along. The whole tapestry is labelled into 60 some scenes. I was surprised that at times it was tough to keep up with the audio guide and I had to pause it in order to take a moment to examine the weaving. I think it’s the first time I’ve experienced an audio guide being too fast in its narrative...usually it’s the opposite. If this tapestry were a movie, it would have to be rated R (for Restricted) due to the blatant violence. There were severed limbs and heads flying all about. One of the main characters, Harold, who was vying for the Crown of England over William, ended up with an arrow in his eye and died...I guess it wasn’t just a flesh wound!
Surprisingly the tapestry did entertain me for about an hour (caveat: that included the museum upstairs). Next I headed to the Battle of Normandy museum which was only about a kilometre away. When a lot of people think of D-Day, they only imagine the landings on the beach, which was what occurred on D-Day but this was only the first step in a long, arduous road to beating Hitler. The next phase was to consolidate the five beachheads (Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno & Sword) and then begin to spread into the countryside...this was the Battle of Normandy. It was a fairly decent museum and I spent over 2 hours in it learning plenty. The Americans were charged with heading east and north up to Cherbourg to try and seize that port while the Canadians and Brits were heading south and then west to take the city of Caen and begin to head towards Paris. Both ran into troubles.
The Museum of the Battle of Normandy:
Inside the museum:
The Americans were slowed to a snail’s pace as they fought in terrain that heavily favoured defensive action. The “bocage” as it’s known as is a marshy area with small fields lined by hedges and often accompanied by ditches. You could easily imagine how easy it would be for surprise attacks by snipers or even just the fact that you could clear out one field and an enemy force could be hiding just 20 feet away in the next. Meanwhile the Brits and Canadians faced some stiff counterattacks by the Germans and this caused them to fall behind on their schedule of taking the city of Caen by about a month. Eventually they both broke through their stalemates and as you know, the rest is history.
I drove down to Arromanche, on the sea, to check out a possible camping site there (actually an “aire”, one of the free French rest stops). Arromanche is the site of one of the two Mulberry harbours that the Allies built. Since they had determined that attacking a deep water port directly would be too difficult and costly in lives (they learned these lessons at Dieppe on August 19th, 1942 with a mainly led Canadian raid), the Allies created a temporary type port that could be installed in a matter of days and weeks versus the usual years.
The beach at Arromanche:
After parking in the aire, I bundled up and walked down to the beach. The tide was way out, exposing a flat, compacted sand beach. The wind was howling in off the ocean with an overcast sky and the odd spray of rain. I decided to venture out towards the water which was about 400 meters out from the coastline. I shared the beach with a few hundred seagulls and that was it. A “Phoenix”, a concrete structure that the Allies used as one of the building blocks of the harbour was about midway out, on a bit of an angle. It’s probably been sitting in the same position since the day I was born. The line of the seaweed and barnacles on the side indicated that the tide raises up some 6-8 feet above the level it was at now. On the backside, facing the town, there was an open doorway starting about 5 feet above the sand. I peered in and was surprised to see a small pool with a bunch of scrambling crabs, alerted to my presence. Poor suckers...nowhere to go until the next high tide...
I returned to Betty to cook some dinner and was surprised that my fridge light was flashing. I reignited it and continued to prepare my pasta leftovers. The light flickered again...no, don’t tell me, out of camping gas again?!? I just bought that, what I thought was a half tank, from Guy 6 days ago...it can’t be out already. Oh yes it can. Thankfully I still had the little camping stove that I bought with Garth and Holly back in Slovenia so I was able to make my dinner but I think I’ll have to figure something else out for the next few days. Whenever these types of events occur, I keep reminding myself...all part of the adventure right!?!
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