Western
Europe continued
Tour of France continued
Thurs 9/27 Day 6 Caen - Mont Saint-Michel. 109 km, 1 ½ hours driving, can visit other beaches in morning & do MSM in afternoon. Or could use as rest day, half day and rest at the wonderful chateau. Or could also spend morning exploring night's before's chateau.
Short drive morning drive to Mont Saint-Michel. Visit this famous church & village on a small mountain top. When the tide is out, sheep graze on the grasses surrounding this mountain. When the tide is in, it becomes an island. I've always wanted to visit this spot, its supposed to be very beautiful. In the afternoon, drive the 50 km to our hotel in Pleugueneuc. Explore the surrounding medieval villages.
1000 FF per night. Reserved via tel and email for two double rooms. Emailed credit card. Want us to arrive before 7pm, or call if don't. contact@labourbansais
Spend one night
in Chateau de la Bourbansais
35720 Pleugueneuc
Tel. 02-99-69-40-07
Well, we had no real idea of what we were in for. The beaches of Normandy, we thought we'd just spend a few hours looking at sand, but the assault on Normandy is not something you can see in just a few hours. You'd need days to do it justice. So we decided to skip Saint Michel for that day and just do beaches. We got up early and drove down to the first of five or six beaches. Omaha was just one of the beaches, there were a lot more. We started where the Brits and Canadians landed. There were little villages there, some hotels, but the beachfront still had markers and pill boxes to show where the battles for the beach had been fought. We picked up some info from a tourist office, and had to map out which things we'd see and which things we'd skip. We ate a quick Italian lunch, then drove to some pill boxes that were still intact, with huge cannons sticking out of the old cement. It gave you an idea of how dug in the Germans were, and how massive trying to get up the beaches would have been.
We then drove to the small town where the Brits had set up a temporary harbor. This was truly the greatest achievement that D-Day gave us. Using this floating harbor, that had been built in England and drug across the stormy seas, the Allied forces supplied the soldiers that eventually fought all the way to Berlin. There was still pieces of the harbor still there, and we went to a small museum that really captured how the bridge was built and what a truly ingenious engineering feat it had been to construct it. We then drove on to Omaha Beach, where the American cemetery was. Along the way we saw signs that said, "Golf Omaha Beach," and we knew the Americans had been there. Actually, the American cemetery at Omaha beach was very well set up and very moving. There are the vast rows of crosses, marking the fallen, but what I liked the best was walking down to the actual beach. My father had heard that the Americans were criticized for "stalling" while the other nations took their beaches. Now we saw why. Omaha Beach was huge! And the Americans lead the charge and took the most ground, so no wonder we stalled! Standing on the sand, and looking up at the hills, it was truly chilling to think how many men died trying to get across that stretch of sand. Laura put it perfectly. Standing there, like standing in an old concentration camp, or any other place that has such a horrific past, you would think that nature would stop in reverence. But that's not the way it works. The birds still chirp, the breeze still blows, the sun still shines. The soil itself might have had blood splashed upon it, but you'd never know that by how pretty it was that day. Our day on the beaches of Normandy was very memorable, but so was the night.
We had called the Chateau de Bourbansais, and Laura got a weird vibe from them. They wanted to know exactly what time we would show up, but we didn't know. The drive took longer than we thought, so we ended up pulling to the locked gate at well past nine. We finally found someone and they lead us down a dark road through a thick wood. Breaking from the treeline, we saw the top of the castle appear through a heavy gate, thunder shattered the still, wolves howled, it began to rain. Well, maybe not, but it was eerie nonetheless. This castle had been built in 1588 and there was at least that many ghosts in it. A woman with a armful of children met us at the front door and escorted us to a large room with a variety of doors in it. She then disappeared into the darkness. She called back and we haggled over the price and there was a lot of drama. Already we were tired and the place was spooky, but the way we were treated! We ate a quick dinner of our own cold leftovers of cheese and old bread, and then, gulp, we went to sleep. We did book two rooms, but we didn't want to be separated and the one room was quite large. We all slept fitfully. Laura slept in this coffin shaped trundle bed, no kidding, and I kept waking up, hearing a woman's dress moving, the fabric sliding against itself. I had to talk myself down, and for the first time in my life, I found that I was happier with my fear asleep rather than awake. True story. We took off early to get away from the house. As we drove out of the gate, we saw a ghostly figure in our room…it was the woman from the night before, but, the manager told us, she and her children had died in a fire a century before. Not really, but it wouldn't have surprised us!
Normandy coastline, we got lucky and had a beautiful day.
German pill boxes dug into the sides of the beach
The American Cemetery & Memorial. At 5pm taps was played every day.
Chateau de la Bourbansais, our spooky hotel for one night
