French signs

No idea.............the jokes I want to make are not appropriate.

Driving in France

So everything you have seen lately from France was spread out all over Normandy.  Trying to get trains or any other public transport was going to be a huge pain so we decided to rent a car and have a go at it ourselves.

This was our first time where we were'nt just going to a city to see the city, but had real purposeful destinations in mind.  I have driven exactly 7 days in the last 20 months so was rusty to say the least.  But the good news was that the cars were on the right and the drivers were on the left.  The other way around like in Britain and I am sure this post would have been titled 'International Incident - American causes 30 car pile up on M25'.

So we picked up the in Calais, and had hands down the least helpful attendant ever at Avis.  Now I take partial blame because I don't know French, but living and working 15 miles from the UK you would have thought she might have picked up some English, but alas no.  We walked out with a key (a key might be giving it too much credit, but more on that later) and had to lock and unlock the doors a couple times as a makeshift homing signal till we found her.

This is it....

Megan the Meagan.  A diesel Renault with zero amenities and a French owners manual.  Kristen reserved a manual transmission because I my old Mustang was, but I must have missed that conversation, or didn't know the context, but not sure I would have been up for it had I known.  We set off and it wasn't long before I was in search of the cruise control.  Well therein lie the problem.  The solution was undoubtedly within the owners manual, but as it was in French it wasn't much help.  We pushed any and all buttons on the dash and steering wheel to no avail, only to find that it was strategically placed in  the center consol.  Why didn't we think to look there first?

And then there is the 'key' I put it air quotes because it wasn't much of a key.  Look at the sice of it too, was like carrying around an extra phone in your pocket.

There was a little slot by the radiuo that you had to put it into and the a push button start stop.  I felt like I was initiating the launch sequence for a nuclear missle, it was just ridiculous.  You didn't even need to keep it in the slot while you were driving, but you had to put it back in to turn the car off.

As we only had highway in front of us things were pretty smooth the first day.  But as we travelled around the French countryside to explore the D-Day beaches a number of other unique problems reared their heads.

First and foremost were roundabouts.  Who in their right mind concluded that the best way to cross traffic was in a circle.  Couple that with signs that are pointed skewed to the direction the mean for you to go, and we spent quite a bit of time going in circles.  Any time we weren't quite sure which way to go I just drove in circles a la Clark Griswold till we made a decision.  All in all though I would say we were pretty successful directionally with no major losts and only a couple wrong ways.

When we were in Rouen I kept having the damnedest time with the traffic lights.  Instead of the lights being on the other side of the intersection or even hanging in the middle the were directly above the car as you pulled up to the light.  I kept doing the lean forward crickneck move trying to see them.  It wasn't till we were almost out of town that I realised that what I thought was the pedestrian crossing lights were mini stop lights for the first car at the intersection.

The mini lights are half way
down the pole.  I thought
it was for the crosswalk.

Seemed to me a awfully expensive answer to the problem when they could have just turned the lights around on the other side of the intersection.

I am also a bit confused about the speed limit signage.  We are all used to one sign that tells you sthe speed limit, and you obey that until another sign comes along and tells you something different.  Simple right!!  Well the French have what seemed to be the most over complicated system ever.  After driving for four days it kinda makes sense but at the time was really confused.  There is one sign at the beginning of the highway that gives a dry speed limit and a rain speed limit.

 Then when you go through a town or something it comes down.  Now is the tricky part.  When you leave town they post this sign.

They don't tell you what the speed limit is just what it is not.  Add on the signs for cars with campers and semis and you never know how fast to go.  On Friday it was raining off and on so I wasn't sure to follow the dry speed or wet speed either.

The biggest issue I had the whole time, all 1300 kms of it, was that the speed limit for semis was at least 20kph and sometimes 40kph less than cars.  That effectively made the right lane of the highway completely useless.  It meant that you were constantly slowing down for slower cars as the passed the even slower trucks.  I am sure the whole idea was for safety reasons but frankly seemed to make things less safe.

I couldn't get over seeing kph on the speedometer vs mph.  Something about looking down and seeing 130 in front of you just made me a bit uneasy.  Its only like 80 mph but in my head it felt a lot faster.

It was nice to get back behind the wheel though.  The countryside wasn't all that dissimilar to Oklahoma.  Rolling hills, cows and trees.  When everyone in the car was sleeping and roundabouts were nowhere in sight it felt like home.

Mont St. Michel

Our final stop on our very own Tour de France was a Mt. St. Michel.  Really a amazing place!!  Felt like we were visiting a fairy tale, or something out of a movie.  Hard to believe a place like this exists naturally.  Seeing it now its impressive, had to be unbelievable 1,500 years ago.

Tons of cool little shops and
restaurants around the outside
of the Abbey

100 or so years ago when the tide came in it would completly circle the Mont and make it an island, but now has been engineered to always have a road accessable in and out.  Ironically they have recently secured 164 million Euros to restore it to its previous glory and let flood daily.  Supposedly it has the greatest variation between high and low tide of anywhere in Europe, something close to 50 feet!!

The Mont acted as a military stronghold for many years and then in 708 the Archangel Michael appeared to the Bishop St. Aubert and instructed him to build an abbey on the island.  Aubert ignored the requests until Michael burned a hole in the Bishop's head to spring him into action.  Here is a statue depicting that moment.

The whole place was pretty low key, which makes sense as it was built by monks, but impressive none the less purely in scale and complexity of construction.

The monks moved away some time around the French Revolution in appx. 1800 but were lured back in 1966. Soon enough though, they got feed up with all the tourists and moved away again in 2001.

Its funny a couple weeks ago I was watching Blazing Saddles, and got to the scene where the two rail workers get stuck in quicksand.  I got to thinking that in my life I had always heard about quicksand but never seen it, and wasn't sure it was anything more than an urban legend.  Then almost on queue .....

I actually saw a girl walking around later with mud up to her knees.  I guess it really does exist.

Longues-sur-Mer battery

Our last stop in Normandy was at the Longues-sur-Mer.  It is the only site where the German guns were not destroyed.  Instead of the big 300 and 400 mm guns at Pointe du Hoc these were relatively small, only 150mm.  As their range was less and they were not as powerful they weren't bombed as extensively beforehand and were somewhat operational during the D-Day invasion.  Although the electronically controlled firing was disabled they remained active during the battle.  Throughout the day on June 6, these 4 guns fired some 170 shell onto Omaha Beach and the supporting ships offshore.

The business end of one of the guns

At some point in the battle the German officers decided they weren't going to win and retreated. The only people who were left were the conscripted soldiers who decided to get drunk and play cards, which was exactly what the were doing when the Americans arrived.  Apparently at some point in the war the Germans ran out of large guns like those at Pointe du Hoc and were forced to protect their positions with inferior firepower.  These guns were Czech.

You can see here where a shell hit the gun during the battle.  Apparently it didn't explode and embedded into the wall behind.

You can see all the spots where the forward observation point to direct hits here.  Quite a big difference in the damage sustained compared to bombs at Pointe du Hoc.

We stopped to smell (errr look at) the flowers along the way.  These poppy fields were everywhere.

Pointe du Hoc

Wow....just wow!! This was everything that I could have asked or dreamed about seeing coming to Normandy.

Pointe du Hoc is a clifftop on the coast of Normandy which lies between Omaha and Utah Beaches on top of 100 ft cliffs.  The Germans had built six gun emplacements and a number of other bunkers here due to its proximity to both beaches and its relative inaccessibility from the sea below.  The Allies had identified it as a crucial target for the invasion.  In the lead up to D-Day they area was bombarded several times from both the land and sea.  In response the Germans moved the guns away from the bunkers and hid them in the bushes and hedges nearby.  Allied command knew the guns were moved but did not tell the Rangers as the location needed to be taken anyway.

It was just amazing seeing all the craters and bunkers in ruins.  The ground looked like swiss cheese or the surface of the moon. Must have been horrible for anyone camped here before the invasion.  It looked as it the bunker's walls were 6 feet thick or so, and reinforced with rebar.  Even with all that most of them were damaged or completely destroyed.  The power of the bombs dropped here must have been incredible.  I bet when they were built they thought they were pretty safe, but they were sadly mistaken.

I was like a kid playing army.  I had to go in every bunker and see everything there was to see.  The extent and scale of the underground bunkers was really impressive.  Must have taken months or years to build.

All guns were gone and replaced by logs...guns were hidden in bushes. The pointe was finally taken by Rangers who were forced to scale the cliffs and fight the Germans at close range.

Looking down on the beach, the view was amazing.  Looking one direction and it was paradise, turn around 180 degrees and it was complete devastation.

Pulled this off the web, EVERYTHING was destroyed

Mulberry Harbor

It is a bit strange to me how I react differently to the different things there is to see here.  Both of the beaches were probably the most symbolic and important locations, and to me the were just beaches.  But today we went to the site of Mulberry Harbor and I thought it was just fantastic.  No battles fought here, just a port for loading and unloading supplies and men, but I could have wondered around all day looking at the remnants.  I guess it just goes to show how visual I am.

Anyway, Mulberry Harbor was actually two artificial harbors, were were towed across the English Channel and put together off the coast of Normandy.  One at Omaha Beach, which is gone now, and one constructed off Gold Beach, which we visited.  All of the construction was done in England and then floated across the Channel and put together like a puzzle, or very big Legos, whichever you prefer.  Each had about 6 miles of roads, and were fastened to piers that sat on the seafloor.  Then they installed floating breakwaters around the entire facility.  By June 18 both harbors were up and running.

A pic from a postcard showing the harbor in action

Before

After - this is what the men are standing on in the
picture above

Remnants of the floats which supported the roads

The breakwater outlining the harbor in the distance

Speaking of before and afters..........This church was between towns, double click to enlarge.  You can see the picture taken from during the war showing the devastation.

D-Day Beaches Normandy

Your quick history lesson here.  Omaha and Utah Beaches were the code names for two of the five sectors of the D-Day invasion.  Both of these beaches were the responsibility of the American military during the attack.  The two beaches were a stark contrast of each other, Utah being taken with relative ease, and Omaha encountered significant resistance and took heavy causalities.  D-Day was selected as it would provide the optimum conditions for an attack, mainly in relation to the tides.  All of the beaches had been covered with mines and various other obstacles to make landing difficult.  The options were to land closer to shore and brave the mines or further out and traverse the open beaches, and low tide was selected for the invasion.  All of the movies and stories of D-Day including Saving Private Ryan are based on these two beaches.

So naturally being Americans we had to visit Omaha and Utah beaches.  I probably had unrealistic expectations that there would be remnants of the was strune about but there wasn't much more than a beach and the odd historical marker or German bunker.

When we first arrived at the Omaha beach the tide was pretty high, but when the tide went out it was hard to believe just how much beach there was to cover.  When you see it first hand it really makes you stop and think.  The difference between high and low tides here is something like 300 yards.  After being at the cemetery earlier and knowing there would have been thousands of casualties, landing on the beach must have taken unbelievable courage.

 

The beaches at low tide just seemed to go on forever

This monument is to the National Guard, on account of the Bedford Boys.  While all other companies and divisions of the regular Army etc. are made up of individuals from throughout the country the National Guard is locationally based, and thus the town of Bedford Virginia took the most severe causalities on a per capita basis of any place in the country, losing 80% of the soldiers on and shortly after D-Day.

We didn't think about it at the time we decided to go, but it turned out that we arrived just about on the anniversary of the actual landing (June 6).  We missed the big events, but did at least visit the picnic celebration the locals were having.  it was probably 100 yards of table all pushed together, and everyone brought their own meals.  Kinda like a tailgate on steroids.

Lots of wine and bread and cheese, but a lot of weird stuff too.  We decided not to crash the party, visited the local pancake house suggested by the travel book.  Was so much better than our independent choice from the night before, where we ended up eating in a huge wine barrel.

Looked much better than it tasted.  Not sure what
2 out of the 3 meats were