An Excursion to the D-Day Landing Beaches

Friday, April 18

We went on a bus excursion to check out the D-Day Landing Beaches today.  Long day sitting on a bus but there were some nice things overall.

There was some slowness getting all the people separated and pointed in the right direction, Martha and I just shook our heads at the stupidity of people when they refused to listen to instructions.

The tour we were on would cover the beaches but mostly from a distant viewing of the ones attacked by the British forces.  We did get out of the bus and walked around a bit at a couple of spots:

In the city of Arromanches, FR.   We tried to tour the Landing Museum which featured info on the Mulberry floating concrete structures used by the Allies to rapidly create breakwaters for hasty harbors.

The museum however proved horribly small and crowded.  We escaped as soon as we could.

Instead we meandered about the are, here's a monument on the eastern side of town overlooking the beach area in front of Arromanches.

Here's Martha and I in front of a rusting bridge hulk remains on the beach near the museum.

Nicely done diorama of the Mulberry structures and how they were put together during the invasion.

After Arromanches and lunch, we rode in the bus over to Omaha Beach:

At the section where the memorial to the 1st and 29th 

Infantry divisions

We spotted this rental rig in the parking lot

One of the reasons I had wanted to see Omaha Beach was to try and get a feel for the obstacles encountered by the soldiers coming off the landing craft on D-Day.  

A lot has changed of course, there's houses now at the bottom of the cliff/ridge they had to climb under fire for one thing.  Basically though, those soldiers had to fight their way up a sloping wall of earth, under fire and amidst confusion, chaos and explosions.  Truly they were incredibly brave men.   

The picture below shows the marker where the first cemetery for fallen soldiers was located next to the beach.  It was later moved to the top of the ridge you see behind it.

A different portion of the ridge/line of hills.  You can see a couple of machine gun ports near the top.  Can you spot the white critter?  It was a cat of all things....stead footedly climbing the side of the cliff!

We saw many of these Rapeseed/Canola fields as we rode around the Normandy area.

After Omaha Beach we rode the bus to the nearby American Cemetery.  9387 soldiers are buried there.

Here's a look at the ceiling of the chapel:

The memorial where the surrounding walls are engraved with the names of the soldiers who died in the area, not just the ones on D-Day.

The lightly rainy and overcast skies were a suiting accompaniment to our sober visit to this site.

This was the last stop, we then spent a bit over 2 hours returning to the ship in Le Havre.  For whatever reason, unfathomable to me, the French decided to shut down two of the four lanes of the bridge near Honfleur for work on the bridge.  This of course delayed us more than the 90 minutes that it had taken originally to go to the beaches area.

Great timing on the part of the French, as the roads were already heavy with traffic since it's a long weekend for them due to Easter.  Oh well.

Anyways, we made it back to the ship with no further issues.

Today, April 19

Sunrise as the ship approached Dover, England:

We disembarked for the last time this morning and caught a 15 passenger van to the airport in Gatwick.  We're staying at the Hilton overnight and catching a flight out to Bilbao, Spain early in the morning.  Stay tuned.

A Port Call to Weymouth, UK

Today we woke to find the ship docking at the cruise ship terminal in Portland Port, near the city of Weymouth, part of Dorchester County.

Holland America had organized shuttle buses, double-decker buses, for the passengers to get to Weymouth.  Portland Port is a commercial port you see, and you can't just wander about lost.  Kudos to HA, not only were there plenty of buses, but the wait at stops was less than 5 minutes.

Once dropped off near the Town Center, we meandered our way to the Promenade next to Weymouth Beach.  The city had volunteers handing out maps to guide us clueless tourists.

Some of the sites we saw as we wandered.  Martha delighted in finding crocheted figures on the way to the town center:

The following three crochet figures, along the Despicable Me motif, were mounted on street side barrier poles.

I found Weymouth more picturesque than Falmouth, perhaps it was the more "open" feel to the town, especially in the esplanade area.

Today's moto content: A Pretty Airhead

There was a short rest period for hydration at the William Henry Pub:

Just one "then and now" pair of pictures:

We also visited the Castle Town D-Day Center.  A small but well layed out interactive museum with many military artifacts and equipment.  A lot of it you can climb onto, pick up and get a feel for it (The German Army's MP40 Machine Gun was surprisingly heavy) and many signs detailing the bio and accomplishments of individual soldiers, sailors and airmen.  Of course, the contributions of women were also detailed.

There were several young men walking about in uniform, to give the exhibits a "live" feel...a nice touch.

I liked the museum, small as it was, because you could touch and examine stuff.  Unlike most museums which limit you to just looking at items.

Martha looks like a natural behind this M2 .50 Caliber MG eh?

Touristed out, we found our way to the shuttle bus stop and shortly returned to the cruise ship with no issues.

They were still cleaning the balconies and outside structures of the ship when we returned:

After a sumptuous lunch in the Lido Market, we wandered to the stern of the ship by the Seaview Pool.  We wanted to get a look at a couple of British Naval vessels.

We walked over 10,000 steps today...my feet feel a bit sore.

Tomorrow, a port call to LeHavre, near Paris, France.  We're taking a bus excursion to the D-Day Landing Beaches.  More to follow.

Update: Adding pics of the small band that showed up in the evening after I'd blogged.  They're apparently the Weymouth Brass Band and they were serenading us while the ship prepared to leave.  Pretty cool and a nice touch!

Our last view of the port, the Portland Fort: