Howells in a Castle

Sunday, 25 September 2016

Friday 23^rd September 2016

A very early start to day as we are off to see the Normandy D-Day Landing beaches.

Temperature has increased a little with predicted high of 24° with clear blue sky and no wind.

First stop was Sword Beach followed by Juno and finally Gold Beach were the “Mulberry Harbour” built D-Day + 1 was built. Most of it is still visible from the beach and there are also some pontoons on the beach that were part of the Bailey bridge built from the portable harbour to the shore so tanks could be driven straight off the ship and onto the beach. Very interesting s the harbour was constructed in England and floated across the Channel to Gold Beach as there were no suitable harbour facilities in the landing zone. All three of these beaches were British & Canadian landing sites. We did not have time to go to further up the coast to the American beaches.

We had a brief stop in for lunch then continued onto see Mont St-Michel, a castle which is built on an island which is accessible at low tide.

We walked round the castle and which is multi level with many steps. It was too late to get into the Cathedral.

Back in the car and off to St Marlo, an old fortified walled port town with the entire city wall still in tact. We climbed up onto the wall for walk around before having a lovely dinner in St Marlo.

We arrived back at our cottage at 11:00pm.