La Closerie Deauville

... there. It was beautiful, haunting, and eerie to see the sight of where the troupes landed on D-Day. When I was in the museum, I was listening to an interactive audio recording of soldier’s experiences from D-Day, and the first button I happened to push was of a soldier from Mt. Vernon, IL! What a small world. To climb down to the actual beach part of Omaha Beach took awhile. It’s ...

Arrived at Ouistreham just before dark and found an Aire de Service right on the beach and this time it was free! The downside was it was right next to the ferry terminal and the 6am ferry to Portmouth the next day was kill the tranquilo the next morning. Kim's Maison du Scooby cooked up a storm. Pork fajitas on rice - delicious. I gave it 5 stars.

From Rouen we drove to Honfleur, which is a tiny harbour town on the Normandy coast. So so cute!!!! We wandered around checking out the wee boutique shops and eating galeti - yum! Nothing for dinner and as it was Sunday only one little grocery shop was open with not much selection so we opted for a fillet of freshly caught ...

Onwards to Etretat for our first overnight stay in an Aires de service. These are overnight parking areas for campers and moterhomes and supply fresh water, electricity and waste dumping facilities. All at a rock bottom price. This one was 5 Euro for the parking a and extra 2 euro for the water and electirc hookup.
Town has spectacular cliffs beautiful old building full of character.

... off unless you're into lace caps and cracked pots. 31.08.09 Chalonnes-Sur-Loire N47.20'57" W0. 44'53" No TV tonight. Pleasant, by the river, but too many trees for the satellite. 01.09.09 Nort-Sur- Erdre N47.26'14" W1.29'39" 02.09.09 Redon N47.38'42" W2.05'22" Dorothy had a shower in the early hours of this morning. Our fault I suppose forleaving the roof-light open. But did she move .... It rained today but not all day. Enough to remind us that not every day is a blue ...

... and not wanting to feed five of us, we regretted the company as we did not want to stop.
We dropped them off at the entrace to another motorway and wished them on their way. We promptly stopped for lunch and a coffee!
Another experience ticked off our list at least.
As things were going well we carried onto through to Noirmoutier to our latest "Aires" in the centre of Noirmoutier at 7 euros per night

... which works to a point but when you're paying two pound per Mb it get expensive. In the great scheme of things its not much when your running a 7 ton bus but its still stupid and it does not re-route if (when)you take a good turning.
On the way to Noirmoutier, it attempted to take us over the "alternative" crossing at high tide!!

The first night was spent in a nice stop on the edge of the old port in Calais.
I've been here before when i did some sailing in my youth so i know it well.
It seemed safe enough as there must have been 50 motorhomes but there was a broken window overnight for someone!
We moved onto honfleur and found a nice stop 2Km from honfleur which was free and had a large football/basketball court for jake to play in

... of his buddies did. A very sad piece of news that affected all of us. But then the most interesting part of the story begins.

We got another phone call as we got closer to St. Mere and we were told that Jim was also suffering with some flu like symptoms and because of that the French police ordered the bus that had remained at the hotel under quarantine. And it was very likely that we would also be quarantined. Why, you might ask? Something called ...

... trenches, and pill boxes. I'm a weird guy. That afternoon we went to Pont-Du-Hoc where about 250 US Rangers had to climb up ridiculously steep cliffs about 100 meters high to assault a huge complex of bunkers and gun emplacements. The area had been heavily bombed during the night before and the huge craters left by the bombs made me wonder how anyone could have survived such an onslaught. But then I saw just how thick these concrete bunkers were and I understood. I few of ...