Note: It's been a week since our return, and I've finally finished my photo album of Normandy, and written about our trip. Sorry for the delay--I must be influenced by the French, with their odd closing hours.
Our neighbors
Every morning during my stay in Normandy, I had a tough decision to make: Whether to walk along the beach or up the hillside behind the gîte? A rocky beach, littered with German war structures, or a steep wildflower-strewn path overlooking a waterfall?
The tough decisions continued: Where to go during the day? The pretty medieval town of Bayeux? The poignant D-Day invasion memorials? How about a drive overlooking the dramatic coastal region of La Hague? Or should we spend the day poking around our local village, selecting loaves at the boulangerie, or just gazing out the window, watching the ferries plowing toward Cherbourg?
I don't want to make our vacation sound too idyllic. The drive from our village near Cherbourg to the typical touristy sites near Bayeux was long, although kilometres gallop by at a fast pace for one accustomed to miles. And that path—perfect grazing grounds for ticks, the scourge of Normandy. It rained one day. And worst of all, French stores have odd opening hours. We managed to find a Carrefour in Cherbourg just as it closed. I tried to play dumb, but a shooing motion can be understood by even dumb Americans, so I left, realizing as I read the opening hours that all the stores would be closed on dimanche—Sunday—as well. And with most restaurants serving meager vegan fare, as well as being closed on Sunday, we were in some danger of starvation.
Luckily, I brought with me plenty of bars, peanut butter, and a half loaf of wholemeal bread, which staved off hunger pains until we could stop at Auchan on the way home from Bayeux on Monday.
Near starvation was not the only exciting adventure we had. On one of our lazy days at the gîte, Daughter Number Two and I walked into the village with the dog. While I went into the grocery store, she stayed outside, and when I came back, my dog had made a new ami, a friendly white lab who lived at the tabac shop. As we walked away, she followed us, then kept following us as we walked through the village, stopping at the boulangerie for a loaf of bread. She kept veering off into the street, causing cars to swerve to avoid her. I told her to "go home!" but she hadn't picked up much English at the tabac shop, so she ignored me.
Finally, she ducked into an open gate, and we thought we'd lost her—until suddenly she appeared on top of the wall next to the sidewalk, above our heads! She gazed down at us, desperate to join her new amis, but the wall was over six feet high. I put up my hands to stop her, but she jumped down anyway, right into the path of an oncoming car! I'd stepped into the street to warn any drivers who might not be expecting a large white dog to jump down from a six foot wall, so fortunately she wasn't hit. I decided our friendship had to end, so I walked her back to the shop and bid her adieu.
We also made friends with the resident cat, who lived at our gîte and enjoyed eating dog food, which my dog kindly shared. You can see why strange animals follow her home.
Aside from the odd adventure, Normandy is a placid place, full of picturesque villages and bustling cities like Cherbourg and St Lo, with little time for tourists. It wasn't always so. There was a time when Normandy was the scene of a dramatic invasion, as well as the departure point for another. Both invasions changed the course of history, even if now all we have left to record the first is a 70-metre long tapestry housed in Bayeax. Of the last, there are plenty of lasting remains, like concrete scars on the beaches. There are monuments everywhere that testify to the thousands of personal tragedies and acts of heroism that took place on the beaches and countryside in the summer of 1944.
One would have to be made of concrete not to be moved by the poignant scene of rows and rows of crosses, markers of those who should have lived to become someone's grandfather but for the need to stop the spread of facism. I am not made of concrete; I had to walk away.
In the summer of 2008, however, there are wild flowers rather than barbed wire, well-stocked boulangeries rather than bunkers. Fat little Smart cars roll along the country roads instead of tanks. Though in the town of Ste Mere Eglise, we saw a couple of army jeeps filled with soldiers, possibly there to reenact some battle, or maybe to entertain tourists. The church, where paratroopers hung suspended after their chutes snagged on the church spires, is now draped with a dummy parachutist and his billowing white parachute, and is a favorite spot for American tourists. I heard more American accents in an hour there than I did during our entire trip.
Our location, near Cherbourg, was a bit out of the way for visiting the heart of Normandy, but that was made up for by the utterly charming setting of our gîte (holiday let). Le Manoir de Dur Ecu is a 16th century castle, and we were staying in the Wheat Mill next door. It's a popular spot on the tourist trail—we saw it mentioned in several brochures, and on postcards. Every day people stopped at the end of the drive to take photos. We felt privileged to be staying in such a picturesque spot, though the manoir was guarded by two not-so friendly dogs. When we followed the steep path up the hillside behind the cottage, we eventually came out on an overgrown path that landed us right in the castle grounds, where we were greeted by growly dogs—not at all like our amie from the tabac shop!
The dramatic coastline of La Hague was also nearby. One afternoon we drove along, stopping at every village and beach. One spectacular lookout point was the Nez de Jobourg, where local lore declares the cliffs to be the highest in Europe. My dog was impressed, anyway—she's quite certain she hasn't seen higher.
We also spent a lazy afternoon at the Ludiver Planetarium, which has exhibits in English and French. Another day we went to Cité de la Mer, which I wrote about here. On Friday, we had an appointment with the vet in St Lo, a Defra requirement for our dog's re-entry into Britain, and after that we ventured on to Le Mont St Michel, which it turned out was where all the Germans had escaped to—almost every camper van in the carpark had a "D" on its plates.
But mostly we just poked around, climbing on the giant concrete "Flexi-blocks" on the beach, walking next to the gurgling stream, gazing out the window at the bateaux...and playing Scrabble in the evenings, our own Battle of Normandy. (I was soundly defeated, which makes up for my boasting after my win in Scotland.) Not a bad way to spend a week.
To see more photos, go here.
