Normandy

This morning we said goodbye to the extended family and our group headed off, taking rather a long route to Normany to first visit Mimoyecques to see the planned site for deployment of V3 rockets towards London in WW2.
We walked through some of the tunnels of this vast underground site which fortunately never achieved the aim of attacking London.

Then it was a long drive south. We don't much enjoy using toll booths on foreign motorways, especially as they all work slightly differently. So far we have encountered about five in France with different techniques. Luckily we had enough coins on us today for the one which rejected our credit card and didn't take notes.

I asked to detour through Deauville which John and I called at when we first arrived on the continent in 1981. It was such a pretty little, upmarket fishing village. Today it was absolutely packed with people, cars, roundabouts, fairs, restaurants. We couldn't get out quickly enough but it was very slow with all the holiday traffic.

I was a bit worried what the place we had chosen to stay at a little further down the coast at Colleville-Montgomery would be like. Fortunately it couldn't be be more different. A wing of a lovely old stone house in completely secluded extensive grounds. It's great when these "lucky dips" turn out such lovely surprises.

The owner, Claude, recommended an excellent seafood restaurant opposite the beach and it was a perfect evening once again for an outside table. No parking problems, the only restaurant in the village and very tranquil. It doesn't come much better.

The beach (pictured) was known as Sword Beach and is the most easterly of the D-Day landing beaches.

I ducked out mid meal for the extra.