Conquering Normandy

by David Gourley

Previously we had dipped our toes into Normandy a couple of times. The first had been during a stay in Brittany when we’d visited Mont St Michel. This is so near to Brittany that some think it is in Brittany. It was very picturesque - and very, very crowded. The second time had been when I stayed overnight in Rouen. This trip featured in a Visa article though it was really a piece about Eurostar. It was the last time I travelled from Waterloo that way, before the opening of the hi-speed route from St Pancras.

We rather wanted to see more of Normandy. In particular we were keen to see the D-Day landing beaches and the Bayeux Tapestry. We found a trip that suited us in this respect, again travelling with Eurostar, upgrading ourselves to Leisure Select, and again based in Rouen, this time for four nights. Eurostar was not at the time riding high in public affection. When it is good, it is very, very good but when it is bad...
Not long before, there had been the disastrous breakdown when trains had been held up for many hours due to the intense cold on land and the inability to cope with the change of temperature in the Tunnel. It is easy of course to sit in a comfortable chair and criticize, but weren’t there people who were paid rather a lot of money to anticipate such problems? Compounding matters was the anything but professional response of Eurostar to the crisis, with train staff apparently locking themselves away from everyone. 

Nothing so dire happened on our trip. We made it to and from Paris on schedule. But travelling out, we waited ages for the complimentary drinks and meal, and no menu was produced. I cannot accept that staff are too busy to put a menu onto tables as they pass down the carriage. When we finally enquired, a charmless steward told us that they were short staffed and had to give priority to the people in Business Premier. That put us in our place. To be fair the lunch, when it finally arrived, was good, the main course being an unusual kind of cottage pie made with ham hock, and service on the way home was faultless. 

There was a surprise on the journey out. Our guide came round to introduce himself. It was Tony, the same chap that we’d had the previous year when we’d had a very pleasant stay, organized through the same tour company, in Sorrento. He had been a good guide so we were pleased. He didn’t, though, remember us. There were we, thinking we always stand out, in pleasing fashion, from the crowd. Clearly we don’t. 

Another surprise, again pleasant, awaited us at Gare du Nord. We were transferring to Rouen by coach and I’d assumed that we’d take the Périphérique out of Paris. Our driver, however, informed us that it was very busy and that we’d do better to drive through the centre of the city. So we had an interesting drive that took in some of the main sights and included a section of the Champs-Elysées. There were memories of Princess Diana. As we passed the Ritz Hotel, Tony pointed out the door where the last ever photographs of her were taken, before that fateful car journey. Then we drove through the very tunnel where the accident had happened. It felt just a bit strange.

We drove along a street in which there are statues, some distance apart, of both Churchill and de Gaulle. Tony was a mine of information but this time he got things a bit wrong, for he told us that the two couldn’t stand each other. That really wasn’t true. The relationship was more one of love-hate. The real loathing was between de Gaulle and Roosevelt, with Churchill sometimes finding himself uncomfortably in the middle. It was certainly true that de Gaulle was a haughty and in many ways difficult individual, who did not at all mind annoying the Anglo-Saxons. But he is deservedly remembered as one of the heroes of the twentieth century. He stood for freedom when the government of the day surrendered to the Nazi invaders. It is said that when he boarded his plane in Bordeaux in order to come to Britain and establish the Free French movement, he carried the honour of his country in his briefcase. On earlier visits to Paris we had been moved by the words of his first broadcast from London, reproduced beneath the Arc de Triomphe. There is a statue of him in London, located in Carlton Gardens, outside the building where the Free French were based.

Rouen is one of those cities that I would describe as a hidden gem. I don’t entirely understand why some places become tourist hotspots and others don’t. In Italy visitors rightly acclaim the beauty of Rome, Venice and Florence, and of some smaller cities such as Siena. But we have marvelled at the beauty of Mantua whilst, in Tuscany, Lucca, save for the fact that it doesn’t have a leaning tower, beats Pisa hands down. In the Czech Republic, Prague, again justifiably, is lauded but one hardly ever reads about Karlovy Vary. This is a beautiful city, still sometimes known by its old Habsburg name, Karlsbad, where the crowned heads of Europe once came to take the waters. We went there a few years after the Velvet Revolution and I was sure that before long western tourists would be flocking there. Likewise in France, provincial cities such as Lyon, Toulouse and Bordeaux take their bow and Lille was ‘discovered’ after Eurostar opened. But it is surprising that there is relatively little interest in Rouen.

Rouen is a beautiful city with an unspoilt medieval centre. That might not, it is true, be the first impression as one enters the city having taken the motorway from Paris. One is here travelling alongside the Seine, a target for bombing after the D-Day landings as it was vital that the Allies destroyed the bridges and thus blocked the path of counterattacking Nazi troops. The area was rebuilt after the war in unsympathetic fashion. But if one goes a couple or so blocks away from the river, one is in the medieval heart of the city. We saw this on a stroll from our hotel, located just outside the centre, and again on a walking tour the next morning.

Our tour took us along cobbled streets, stopping to go inside the magnificent Notre Dame Cathedral, where Claude Monet had put up his easel. Then it was along the main thoroughfare which is graced by, and indeed named after, the Gros-Horloge, the resplendent clock tower that bridges the street and boasts one of the largest clock faces anywhere. We finished in the Place du Vieux-Marché. It was here that Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake and a huge cross marks the spot where this happened. Close by is the church that is named from her; this is decidedly modern, but all around the buildings are medieval. 

On the way back, we saw that the Gros-Horloge could be entered free of charge as part of a Printemps au Normande promotion. That was the good news. The bad news was that there was a queue and it was getting on for lunch time. In France it is not unusual for attractions to close for fully two hours at lunchtime and they won’t let you in after 11.30 for fear you might not be out by twelve. The people at the end of the queue had been led to understand that they were the last who would be admitted before lunch. We chanced our arm, joined the queue and were admitted. As well as the fascinating museum and the views of the clock’s mechanisms from inside, there were fine vistas over the city, which is scenically located amidst low–lying hills, to be enjoyed from the terrace. 

In the afternoon we headed a few miles north to Fécamp. This is a pleasant resort but probably would get far fewer visitors if it didn’t have the magnificent Benedictine Palace. This is a delightfully eccentric building. To start with one might think one was in a stately home but then one comes to the distillery where the liqueur is produced. One ends the tour with a tasting. Tony had warned us that it tasted awful but I quite liked it and told him so. Only one other person in our rather large party had liked it, he told me. 

For dinner we pushed the boat out and dined at La Couronne, which is France’s oldest inn, dating back to 1345. So old in fact that it was there when Joan was burnt just outside in the Place du Vieux-Marché. It was very atmospheric and we enjoyed an excellent meal served by friendly and attentive staff. Over breakfast next morning, we wondered what the oldest inn back home is. We were sitting with just the couple who could tell us. They hailed from Nottingham and England’s oldest inn is Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, located in that city and dating back to 1189.

The next day we headed to Honfleur. This has some claim to be Normandy’s most beautiful town; I have even seen it included in the itineraries of coastal cruises around Britain, the deviation southwards clearly being thought worthwhile. Its charm derives from the fact that this is old Normandy, untouched by the fighting in World War II. Normandy, of course, was where the Allies launched, from the D-Day beaches, their drive across Europe that was to end in the defeat of Hitler (though Allied forces were, it should be remembered, already on the Continent, battling their way up the Italian peninsula: Rome was liberated on the same day as the landings). The people of Normandy are grateful to their liberators, but they paid the price of living in the first part of France to be freed, for the Nazis put up a stubborn resistance that led to many towns and villages, above all Caen, being virtually destroyed. Once this resistance was defeated, the Allies were able to advance with relative ease through the rest of France. Honfleur somehow managed to survive intact, as did the medieval centre of Rouen.

The drive to Honfleur was mainly along motorways but one part was interesting for we crossed the spectacular Pont de Normandie, which crosses the Seine near its estuary. From here Le Havre and its industry could be seen. We greatly enjoyed our time exploring Honfleur and there was also a bit of time for exploration when we got back to Rouen. We used this to have a look round the Joan of Arc Church and the rather upmarket market that is outside the church itself, but under its vast roof. The striking modernity of the church might be thought to be at odds with the medieval surrounds but somehow it works. Continuing with the Joan of Arc theme – she is the city’s revered daughter though she only went there to be executed – we went to the nearby museum that is dedicated to her life, a charming and well laid out place with earphones offering a commentary in inter alia English. We were reminded, of course, that it was the perfidious English who were responsible for Joan’s demise (with a bit of help from the Burgundians) but Rouen has, as they say, moved on and the English visitor will feel very welcome there.

The last of our full days was taken up with the longest of our tours which was really our raison d’être for coming to Normandy, though there are plenty of other good reasons to visit. This took us to Bayeux and the D-Day beaches. First stop was Bayeux. Sometimes a well-known attraction disappoints when one actually gets to see it but the Tapestry certainly doesn’t do that. It is thought that the Tapestry – an embroidery rather than a tapestry as such – was commissioned by Bishop Odo, half-brother of William the Conqueror. It depicts the Norman Conquest of England. Across the channel it inspired the splendid tapestry in the D-Day Museum in Southsea that depicts that momentous event in 1944.

The commentary in our earphones went at a cracking pace. At the end of it we wanted more time to admire the Tapestry so we went round again, sans earphones and at our own pace. There was plenty more to look at in the building that houses the Tapestry, including a model of an English village, East Meon in Hampshire, at the time of the Conquest. We could have spent all our time there but did not want to miss out on looking round the town of Bayeux, which is a place of great charm.

Like Honfleur, Bayeux was spared destruction in World War II. This was because it was the first city to be liberated after the D-Day landings and the surprise element enabled allied troops to take it without any fighting. As such it was the first to be visited by General de Gaulle, who arrived soon after. He was determined that his first step onto free French soil would not be on land liberated by the Anglo-Saxons. So Omaha and Utah Beaches (where the Americans had landed) were ruled out, as were Gold and Sword (ditto the British). It had to be Juno, liberated by the Canadians, including of course French-speaking Québecois. 

Soon after leaving Bayeux, we stopped on the outskirts of the town in order to visit the immaculately maintained British and Commonwealth War Cemetery, a moving experience which brought to mind our visit to El Alamein a few years earlier – without that victory in Egypt, there would have been no D-Day landings. It is the largest such World War II cemetery in France, containing 4,648 graves, some poignantly recording the death of an unknown soldier. Across the road is the Memorial to the Missing, which bears a Latin epitaph that translates as ‘We, once conquered by William, have set free the Conqueror’s land’. 

We continued to Arromanches. Parts of the famed Mulberry Harbour are still visible out at sea. This was the brainchild of Sir Winston Churchill. In 1942 Canadian forces had raided Dieppe. This was an abortive foray but a lesson learnt was that it would be virtually impossible to launch an invasion of the European mainland through an established port, as it was bound to be very heavily defended. A port would thus have to be created, hence the artificial harbour which was assembled in Britain and towed out to Arromanches, which was transformed overnight from a sleepy fishing village to the world’s busiest port.

We had some spare time in which to wander around Arromanches and also to have lunch in the June 6th restaurant, named from D-Day. I had a good Normandy-style meal of pork cooked in cider, washed down with a glass of cider. We then reassembled as a party for our visit to the museum that commemorates the D-Day landings, the Musée du Débarquement. It would have been good if it had been a bit less crowded. Nevertheless it was an enjoyable and thought-provoking visit that included the Admiralty film of ‘Port Winston’. There is an exhibition commemorating the various nationalities that took part in the Landing. One might, if asked to say who these were, reply that they were the British, Americans, Canadians and, last but certainly not least, the Free French. But there are others who are remembered: the Belgians, at the start of a long march that would take them back to their homeland; the Danes, Norwegians, Dutch and even Luxembourgeois; and the gallant fighters whose own countries would remain unfree until the very end of the eighties, the Czechs and the Poles.

We headed eastwards, paralleling the landing beaches. A bit disappointingly, there were not many glimpses of the beaches themselves and at one point there was an annoying diversion inland. But finally we stopped at Sword. For our first two full days we had had glorious weather. It was still dry on this day, but the temperature had dipped considerably. We were dressed for the earlier period and an extra layer or two would have been sensible. The fact that it was freezing cold was not, of course, going to stop us going onto the beach, but I confess that we didn’t linger. We reflected as we reboarded our warm coach that the brave soldiers who’d landed on that beach 66 years previously were completely at the mercy of whatever the elements threw at them. 

We now turned inland and headed back for our last night in Rouen. A final recollection of the momentous events in 1944 came as we passed though the village that had once been known simply as Colleville. It is now Colleville-Montgomery. There is a statue of the great man. Apparently there was much debate about which direction it should face. One option was for it to look towards the sea and thus at the beaches where his troops had landed. It was decided, however, that it should look inland, towards the rest of the country which he had played such a vital part in liberating.

First published in VISA 93 (Oct 2010)