We had a great day visiting Bayeux where we saw the Tapestry. Amazing piece of work and it made me buy a souvenir! Later we drove to the American Cemetery at above Omaha Beach which was quite impressive situated high overlooking the beach with immaculate gardens. Today we drive north and plan to spend a couple of days touring the the sites if the Western Front battlefields. The weather is grey. It will suit the tour.
Normandy
We visited Mont St Michel after a good drive along the coast from St Malo along a Michelin map green road. It was drizzling but that added a different perspective to the landscape. Sharon thought the Mont was great. It was another big church after all but it was all a bit touristy and I felt I was adding a little to that problem by being there. Once, so I’m told, the tide would prevent us from accessing the island but now a high causeway, soon to become wider allows us all to steam in there 24 hours a day. The surrounding countryside is lovely with farmland growing corn and vegetables, black headed sheep and dairy cows grazing.
We drove to the D Day beach coast hoping to jag a room at some inn but it took 5 rejections until we found a sign advertising chambres in a small hotel just behind Gold Beach where the Americans landed in 1944. We had a beer and a rose and were convinced by the cheerful family group who run the hotel/bar/take away that we should have dinner. A consultation of the menu and many confused exchanged looks led the chef, who had a fine moustache, to bring samples of his food from the kitchen for us to look at. What Sharon thought were scallops ended up being veal so this was rejected in favour of moules. I was convinced, somewhat easily by the chef and his father with a little help from the daughter who was the “expert” speaker of Australian, to try huites (wheats). To help me decide, he held out for me to inspect an oyster the size of his palm. I wanted six. The chef suggested ten, but the father who won out, insisted I have twelve. They were the best oysters I have had in a long time.
Perhaps I showed too much pleasure in eating his food, “Tres bon! Merci! Bonjour! Fromage!” for before I’d finished the last oyster, the hairy lipped chef returned with a bowl of large sea snail shells, fresh from the sea, it seemed, as they still had the green sea grass clinging to the shell. His English was worse than my French so he tried a silly grin and movements of long skewer with small prongs on the end to indicate I should pierce the grey flesh of the snail and ease it from the shell. The family gathered around the table. Father, in his pink shirt and hairy eyebrows raised in anticipation, the thin interpreter daughter with a knowing grin and the wife watching from the doorway, her hands on her hips.
You’d be surprised how much snail can fit inside what I thought was a small shell. I half expected it to pop after it finally came out. After chef showed how I should remove the sucker, which had gone hard in the cooking, and squeezed a little mayonnaise on the plate to help it slide down, I popped the thing straight in. The father broke into a grin and the chef positively sparkled. The snails, I had four more, weren’t too bad. A little chewy, like squid. Later we walked on Gold Beach here at Ver sur Mer which was covered with acres of purple, green, brown and red seaweed.
St Malo
The web site said when I booked a room at the Hotel de France Chateaubriand in St Malo, that parking is not available. They lied. A young French girl in heels and a short black dress directed my car into a small lift and as I looked at her in the rear vision mirror to see what might happen next, she pressed a button and she began ascending and I went in the other direction, into some medieval dungeon which now served as a car park. That was a first.
St Malo was flattened in WW 11, but was rebuilt in much the same fashion as before, we are told. We toured another cathedral which only opened again in 1972 after it was bombed in 44. Travelling to new places certainly creates work. It’s going to take me years of reading to discover what went on in these places before Australia discovered it.
The walls seem to be the main attraction here and as they circle the town, we circled the town on them, trying to keep our hair on in the wind which has blown fairly steadiy all day. We climbed down some narrow stone stairs and saw a photographic exhibition in one of the towers on the wall.
The weather the last few days has been fairly ordinary, but we did see glimpses of sun today. These summer days are much like our winter ones. I saw on the French news tonight the Col du Galibier where Le Tour is heading in the next few days, covered in heavy snow. Campers, like ours three years ago in the sun, were shown sliding about in the snow. That’s going to be a sight when the riders get there.