FRANCE
Friday the 17th
After a small sleep in we got on the road to our destination which we decided would be Normandy, on the Northwest coast of France. It was a trip of more than 400km. It was a miserable day with rain and lots of wind. We slowly got through the trip, stopping at expensive toll booths along the way and also a couple of food stops. We stopped after an hour and had our breakfast at a nice lookout but didn't spend too much time outside Sven because of the weather. Lunch was in a petrol station carpark, because that was easiest. Still we enjoyed the trip, and started to really feel like we were in France, passing small villages with clusters of houses surrounding the church spires that stood much higher than anything else around them. Fields of wheat and corn dominated the countryside. The roads were fantastic, and with a speed limit of 130km/hr we were able to get through the trip as quickly as possible while driving Sven, whose top speed is 110km/hr. A highlight of the trip was crossing the river Seine over the Pont du Normandie. It was a magnificent bridge. The pictures do not do justice to how big and steep it is (we went up it very slowly!). Eventually we found a nice campground, Rheine Mathilde, near Beyeux. After doing a few things like filling our fresh water tank by bucket (which required fashioning a funnel from a milk bottle) we managed to eat dinner and use the internet to take care of a few important jobs. We were happy to make it to bed in a campsite nestled in the French countryside.
Saturday the 18th
We were up early and woke to a much nicer day. It was warm, sunny, and there was only a gentle breeze. After showers we packed up our camp site and were on the road just after 8am. We headed straight for Omaha beach, and the American War Cemetery, which is home to more than 9000 fallen American soldiers (it's the one with the rows of white marble crosses you see in the movie 'Saving Private Ryan'). We arrived at 8:30, but it did not open until 9am, so we sat in the car park and ate breakfast then headed in. There were not many other people there which was nice. It was a staggering sight to come around the corner of the path through the trees to see the fields of white crosses. They seem to stretch further than the eye can see. We spent more than an hour wandering around the crosses and memorial building before heading into the museum. The museum was very informative and very educational. Being there makes the numbers and size of the events seem even more horrific. We were there until almost 12 o'clock before we headed down the road. We drove to coast road to Arromanches, another French town on the coast which was one of the centres of the battles on that coast. On the beaches and about 200m off shore are the remnants of a 'Mulberry' harbour, a temporary harbour which was built by the allies during WWII. It was a nice little town, that had been liberated by the British. This is still celebrated - as well as French flags lining the streets, the Union jack is also flown. It was a nice afternoon, but we decided to move on, and luckily when we made it back to the van the rain arrived, after stopping into a patisserie for a few treats for later – a citroen tart and a strawberry, pistachio and cream flan.
From Arromanches we headed into Bayeux, which we had temporarily forgotten about. After Em managed to successfully negotiate the narrow cobbled streets in Sven (she had her first turn at right-hand driving today) we parked up and walked into the town centre. Our first stop was the Bayeux Tapestry. We went to this on a recommendation from a friend in Ireland. I am probably not the best person to have gone, as my appreciation of this sort of thing is not that high. However it was quite enjoyable to hear the background story while looking at the tapestry, and the detail in parts of this piece of artwork was fantastic. Particularly as it seemed to have been done on one continuous piece of linen fabric – 70 metres long, by one metre high. Em enjoyed seeing it, and appreciated it much more than me. From the tapestry we went to the Notre Dame cathedral in Bayeux. It was extremely impressive from the outside. We waited outside for a wedding to finish up and see the bride and groom leave, then we headed on in for a look around. It was strange, the first thing we noticed was the light inside, as there were not many stained glass windows – mainly walls of clear glass up high. It had a lot of similarities to the Notre Dame in Paris though.
Our day did not finish there. We had purchased a book written by an American couple who had toured Europe in a motorhome, and had some recommendations on the same thing. One thing was to not miss the 'hypermarches' which are enormous supermarkets in France. We went to Cora hypermarche and we were not disappointed. We are supermarket junkies really and this was fantastic. It was like 'The Warehouse' plus giant aisles of deli, green grocers, butcheru, bakery, and supermarkets all in one. It was great. We were so disappointed to have been in Sven and not living there because it would be great to fill up the home cupboards with tasty food on a visit. We could have happily filled a few trollies. We picked up a few van items that we needed (e.g. mugs, and a dust buster) as well as some food. As the afternoon was quickly disappearing, we decided we had better choose a town to sleep in for the night. We choose a small coastal town Northeast of Omaha beach, Trouville. We found a campground eventually, down a steep driveway. Thankfully it was open with space available, so that is where we finished up for the day. We had fantastic pork and onion sausages that we had purchased from Cora hypermarche, and were in bed at about 11pm.
Sunday 19th of July
We were up earlyish, and decided to get some clothes hand washing done as the weather looked promising. We were leaving the campground before anyone else was up. We drove the coastal route via Honfleur (a beautiful French sea-side town) to Rouen. Rouen is a medieval city, which was severely damaged in WWII. It was rebuilt following the war. When we drove into the city we could not really understand what the fuss was. It seemed like just another city. We parked up and went for a walk into the city centre. Our first stop was the Rouen Cathedral. It was very gothic, and extremely impressive. The amount of detail in the carvings and stone work on the cathedral was amazing. We continued into the 'medieval' old quarter of the city, and found out why Rouen was recommended. The buildings are all higgledy-piggledy, and look as though they are going to fall over. They are made with the wooden framing as part of the exterior. I am not sure the builders had levels because some of them seem very crooked from the outside. We did not get to see the inside, so we are not sure whether they have straighter interior walls. After walking down the narrow pathways looking for crepes, we stumbled across a fantastic Sunday market. It was amazing, and put parts of Cora hypermarche to shame. There was everything you would expect there to be in a French market, but it was better than we had both imagined. There were cheese stalls selling 5 cheeses for €5, fruit and vege stalls, bread stalls, butchers, salamis, and wine. It was fantastic. We ended up with wine, cheese, cherries and rock melon, and 3 salamis (chorizo, faison which is pheasant, and chilli). We were sad not to leave with more but had to be practical about how much we could store and eat. From there we went back to the van and had a nice lunch, eating a couple of the items we had purchased and putting the rest away. We drove for another couple of hours from Rouen to Cambrai, a town near the French / Belgium border. We found a sign for a campground while driving into the town and followed these with a good result. We found a nice campground which was relatively empty. It was a nice sunny afternoon, and as we had made it by before 5pm decided to take advantage of this, string up a clothes line and do some washing, rearranging our cupboards and vacuuming the van with our newly purchased dust buster mini vacuum cleaner. Em did the first empty of the chemical toilet – not as bad a job as expected. After this was done we sat back and relaxed with a bottle of wine and some cheese and crackers. Em made omelette for dinner, then we we caught up on journals and other things.
