Overland Tales

I never in a million years thought I would become addicted to French Teletext, but every morning without fail I was looking up the French news pages on the telly to find out progress on the strike. And success! It seemed as if today, the start of my third week, that more trains were going to be running; as many as up to 1 in 3. I bolted down to the train station at Granville to see my options.

There was a train to Paris, and I was sorely tempted to delay my jaunt through Normandy and head for the bright lights of the capital. But if I am anything it is stubborn, and so I stuck to my guns and picked a train going North to Coutances, from which I would be able to pick up a later connection to Bayeux, where the real French adventure would start.

Only it turned out not to be a train, but a replacement bus. Luckily, the driver let me stow my bike in the hold under the vehicle and soon I was flying off to Coutances. I took a further bus to Lison and finally a train to arrive in the very pretty town of Bayeux.

The YHA there was a fabulous stone-stepped old building, and I had a dorm room all to myself and a massive continental breakfast with fresh pastries and filter coffee for €19. I knew I had found something good, so I stretched out my time and stayed two nights.

If everything seemed to be going wrong for me last week, then this week Lady Luck was positively grinning down on me. Not only for the hostel, but also for my visit to see the Bayeux Tapestry - a thousand year-old embroidery depicting the events of and leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066, when the French gave us a beating. I was the first one in on a weekday in off-season, and as a result I had the Tapestry all to myself. No screaming kids, no North Asian toursts taking non-stop pictures... just me and a thousand year old work of art. I felt privileged.

Later I took to the bike again and visited the D-Day landing beaches North of Bayeux. My destination was Gold beach, where 63 years ago my Grandfather disembarked as part of the York & Lancaster "Hallamshires", moving to the front line of battle four days later. I roughly followed the route he had taken down to Fontenay-le-Pesnel, now a quiet French village with a pretty duck pond at which I ate my sarnies, but which for my Grandfather was taking cover in a hastily-dug slit trench during days of constant shelling, hoping pot-luck that you wouldn't be hit, followed by a fierce battle against the 26th Panzers Regiment. I just couldn't begin to imagine what it must have been like.

I stopped at a number of cemeteries at which the British D-Day fallen were laid to rest, most notably that at Saint Manvieu, where a number of my Grandfather's comrades were buried. I passed on his respects. It was a very moving day, and words fail me to describe what I felt.

I continued my tour of D-Day sights by biking to Caen and visiting the Pegasus Bridge Memorial Museum. It described in great detail a daring mission whereby members of the British 6th Airborne flew in and took two bridges undamaged which were vital for D-Day to proceed, as it allowed Regiments like my Grandfather's to push to the left and liberate Holland. The museum was superbly done, being packed with exhibits, and the curator, a British man, had a real passion for the operation and knew it in great detail, giving us amusing anecdotes he'd heard from the veterans of the raid. We saw the bridge itself - complete with bullet holes! - and a replica of one of the gliders used in the raid.

Caen was a pleasant enough city - it was refreshing to be in a vibrant city rather than the dead provinces of Normandy (even Bayeux had pretty much shut down at 9pm or so) - but I decided to save my urban wandering for the big one: Paris. I had to take two trains to get there, since I couldn't take my bike on a direct train, and as a result I arrived late and splashed out by spending a night in the Novotel near Paris Montmatre station. I slept wondrously and got to nick all the soaps and shampoos from the room, so it wasn't too much of a splurge.

The next day I picked a hostel. One of the YHAs was further out from the centre but boasted a bar, cinema and restaurant, so I plumped for that. It turned out to be a good decision; I pottered over there, at first fearing the Paris traffic but soon finding out that the city is kind to cyclists, with cycle lanes everywhere and fairly respectful drivers. Not something you would get in London, where you would be nuts to cycle.

After a night in the bar meeting some interesting characters - including a Norwegian, blues-singing barman and a French-speaking Japanese chap (you don't meet many of either of them!) I decided it was about time for some culture, and spent three hours in the Louvre in two sessions either side of lunch (the ticket is valid all day, so it's a good idea to break up a visit since there's so much to see else your head will explode from all the culture). It is easily the most varied art museum I had been to, featuring Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Arab and European works of art from sculpture to pottery, paintings to metalwork and everything else in between; the collection is immense. Not to forget featuring a famous picture of some plain Jane bint called Lisa and an equally well-known sculpture of a woman with no arms, of course...

After the Louvre, I needed to balance my culture-o-meter, so paid a visit to McDonald's to balance the scales again. It was on the Champs-Elysees though (free wifi as well in that branch!). I marched up the rest of the road to say hello to the Arc de Triomphe and swung by the Eiffel Tower to complete the Obligatory Tourist Circuit, but found the summit was closed so I decided to leave it til tomorrow.

I was the 30th person to the summit that day, and I crapped myself all the way. The lift is cunningly glass, so you can see Paris falling away from you slowly, and since the tower is also full of gaps it gave a not-altogether safe feeling. I hate heights anyway, so this was good training for me, but I was glad to reach the solid safety of the observation level. The views were rather hazy - the morning mist hadn't yet cleared - but where the sun was on the city, the mist had been evaporated away and the building were more visible.

Paris had surprised me - in a good way. My opinions of France were rather low after my experiences in Normandy, but Paris was a wonderful place: elegant but with an edge as well, and vibrant without the clamour and crush of London. I had rather fallen for the place.

Now... if only they didn't speak French there... it'd be perfect :)