Villedue Les Poules Part 3 - Normandie

R.I.P

Hey all,

If you haven't fallen asleep, there is more to this adventure! We headed off to Arrmanches. This is the start of the tour. If you do not know what actually happened you need to read into it. Here
is a link that may help: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Normandy)

Needless to say that this is where the majority of the troops and stuff landed after they built a floating harbour! Pretty ingenious for 60 years ago. It was only meant to last 6 months, and there is still some of the harbour there now! This is view out to where the harbour was built, with some of the pontoons still visible.



You can see by the picture that some of these have ended up on the shore. You can also see how much the tide moves most days, with the green slime on the closest pontoon showing the high tide marks. There is about 14 m of movement! Yay a beach! I had almost forgot what they had looked like.

There is a great museum the 'Musee de Debarquement' This explains how it all happened with models and stuff. There is a big model of the whole region. They have a couple of films also that show what happened. There is soldiers uniforms and stuff also. It was like a trip back to Soldier of Fortune with all the rifles used in the game in this museum! The pictures below show the pontoons setup and an Enfield rifle for your SOF fans!



After checking out the musuem we went down to the water for a swim and photos. Here is a pontoon up close.This is what they transported the tanks and stuff on, from the ships. A very clever idea at the time, they were mass built in England very secretely and then transported over the channel, joined together with stabilising bits attached and stuff and the were tank proof!



On the way we stopped of at where there was some German forts. Very cool with 100mm guns sticking out and the concrete was 2m thick!

After this we headed off to Omaha beach, where the Americans landed. They have nearly 10000 American troops buried here. A very nice cemetery, extremely well maintained, with the mower men going everywhere!


After some reflection, time to head off to another musuem nearby. This has just been restored and is really cool, with tanks and stuff inside and out. They give a better idea of all the troops movements from the different countries and stuff. A film shows old footage of the troops fighting it out and the capture of the key towns and stuff and how long and costly this bloody battle was.

Time to head home after a long day of driving (for some!) and get some dodgy Maccas on the way home.

Coming up, Last day in Villedue Les Poules and back to Paris to finish our adventure on the mainland!

Cam and Nat