The second day in Bayeux would be a full day of riding and dinner on our own in the city. The route for the day was a loop from the hotel to the town of Arromanches which was a major landing site for the Allies. Known as Port Winston the port would serve the landing of 2,500,000 men and 500,000 vehicles during the invasion.
We started our day with a warm-up run through Bayeux. I absolutely love
touring a town by foot this way. We can cover so much territory in a
short period.
We followed markers that led us to 21 different historic spots in the
city. Each spot has a descriptive board to read. It was like a mini
treasure hunt because some of the markers we had to really look for..
It was the most fun we have had running together.
After we returned to the hotel we had breakfast and our pre-ride meeting. This would be an everyday occurrence so we could review the route, identify tricky turns, get restaurant recommendations and know of any time schedules. After our morning meeting we headed out to Arromanches 22 miles away.
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| The beautiful country side was predominantly farmland. |
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| Just like back home.....cows on the farm. |
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| The on bike selfie with Brenda |
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| Also got a picture with Joe. |
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| Aimee loved seeing the poppies everywhere. |
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| Old door at the priory |
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| We saw hydrangea like this everywhere |
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| Classic Citroen |
In addition to the
Priory we stopped at a family run umbrella factory called
H2O Parapluies. We looked around and one of the daughters gave us a great demonstration of their umbrellas and explained why they are guaranteed for life. Aimee bought a beautiful blue and pink umbrella with little bows on it. It is a compact one with an automatic opener.
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| At the umbrella shop |
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| The Hill du Jour before getting to Arromanches |
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| Finally arrived at Arromanches |
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| One of the beached Mulberry's. These concrete structures were used as floating docks. |
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| Aimee next to the Mulberry to show it's size. |
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| The objects in the back ground were also part of the temporary docks. |
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| Arromanches |
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| This is the same statue from the picture above |
Our guides, Bruno and Sophie, told us that mussels were in season and to get some for lunch. We grabbed a table at
Au Six Juin and ordered the mussels with fries. We were expecting to get a small bowl with maybe a dozen or two mussels. Little did we know we would be served a POT of mussels. We estimate that each pot had about 40 mussels inside.
Did we eat them all.....heck yeah. And they were delicious. Forget about the fries, there was no room after eating all of the mussels.
After lunch we walked around and Aimee put her feet into the French Channel. At least that is what Bruno told us it was called.
One last stop in Arromanches was at the
360 degree movie. Old footage was put together showing the Battle of Normandy.
We rode back to Bayeux on the medium option so we could visit the
Normandy Museum in our base town.
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| Approaching the city of Bayeux we saw the cathedral |
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| Aimee got her picture of the red poppies |
The museum was very nice. It was cool to see the equipment used during the battle, how the battle progressed, etc. We tried watching the movie there and found ourselves falling asleep.
As we walked back to the hotel we noticed these little shutter stops. I thought they were the coolest piece of architecture we had seen so far.
We bought a cheese sandwich to last us until dinner. Our reservations weren't until 7:30 so we had some time to clean up and rest at the hotel.
We joined Brenda and Tonya at Le Moulin De La Galette. Galettes are the dinner version of crepes. And of course there were crepes for dessert. We had a great time getting to know our travel companions.
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