The Normandy Landings

Today we soaked up a bit of WW2 history.
All the stuff you wished you had listened to a bit better at school.
Now I can't get enough of it and really need to do some more swotting.

Starting at Sword Beach, we worked our way up the Normandy beaches famous for the 1944 D-Day landings which began the liberation of France and eventually the end of the war.

We stopped at Juno Beach where the Canadians landed and Arromanches where we saw an amazing and moving film on 9 screens in a circular theatre.
Cut from real footage from the war and incorporating speeches from the world leaders it really made you feel you were in the thick of the action.

At Gold beach we could see the remains of the artificial harbour created to shelter the fleet.
Great metal blocks had been towed from Britain for this purpose.

The image I have blipped is of Omaha Beach.
It seems this was the most difficult of all to conquer with the enormous cliffs the soldiers had to scale.

At various points along the coast are the remains of gun emplacements and bunkers and evidence of bomb craters.

By this time it was 7:30pm so we didn't attempt to get to the final beach, Utah, but I think we have seen the main sites of particular interest.
You would need to spend weeks here to do it justice.
There are lots of museums I would have loved to have visited as well.