Wednesday, 5 May 2010, day 12
We got it down to a fine art now. The evening before we sit or rather lie in the tent with the netbook and plot our route for the next day. I transfer waypoints and route to the gps while Ellie makes a list of towns and road numbers to stick with the map on her handlebar bag. Makes navigation easy because we double check each other every time.
It was only a short distance to the town of Bayeux which we hoped would be a bit better than Caen and so it was. Along the way there is plenty of accommodation available, here Ellie stand at a Gite de France sign. We have decided to use our pack covers permanently as it keeps things nicely together.
The town was much more to our liking as it did not suffer much from the bombing so the center is more or less intact. We spent quite a bit of time cycling the narrow streets and violating all traffic rules before heading out again. We had lunch in a nice park which made us think about St Georges Park in PE and how sadly neglected and unsafe it is. We were particularly impressed by this Wisteria.
We followed the road to the coast because we wanted to visit at least one of the D-day landing beaches and visit a cemetery so we ended up on Omaha.
Quite an experience to stand on the site where the invasion took place and see the terrible toll it took.
I then had enough of the touristy stuff and we found ourselves a nice little place at the edge of a wheatfield to sit like dassies in the sun munching some chocolate before finding a Carrefour to stock up on provisions. Carrefour is pretty much like Pick an Pay in SA and kills off the small shops in the villages in the same way.
Now we are stuffed after a huge meal of spaghetti, beetroot and mince meat, all prepared on our trusty Trangia fueled with “alcool a bruler” which means literally ‘alcohol to burn’