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Tuesday 6th May - After a good nights sleep and a sleep in until 7.30 we headed down for beaky at 8am and found most of our group already here. Kate is still not well and she missed out on dinner last night. Sounds like to me her flu has turned into bronchitis, something with I am all too familiar with, and something which I don't want !!!
We all meet in the foyer at 8.45 and walked to where the Bayeux Tapestry is on display. The tapestry, well really it is embroidery, not a tapestry at all - depicting William the Conqueror's invasion of Britain in 1066. The tapestry was amazingly spectacular - it is 70 meters in length , no photos allowed b*****. You are given hand held devices which relates the story as you walked along the 70 meters. The commentary was good, not a lot of dates and info which makes your head spin trying to remember them all. Plus they threw in some jokes along the way with their last comment being "William the b******".
We then travelled to Arromanches-les-Bains to explore the Normandy landing beaches which opened my eyes to the entirety of the operation which was massive.
The Invasion of Normandy was the invasion and establishment of Western Allied forces in Normandy, during Operation Overlord in 1944 during World War II, the largest amphibious invasion to ever take place.
D-Day, the date of the initial assaults, was Tuesday 6 June 1944 and Allied land forces that saw combat in Normandy on that day came from Canada, the Free French Forces, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the weeks following the invasion, Polish forces also participated, as well as contingents from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and the Netherlands.Most of the above countries also provided air and naval support, as did the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force,and the Royal Norwegian Navy.
The Normandy invasion began with overnight parachute and glider landings, massive air attacks and naval bombardments. In the early morning, amphibious landings on five beaches codenamed Juno, Gold, Omaha, Utah, and Sword began and during the evening the remaining elements of the parachute divisions landed. Land forces used on D-Day deployed from bases along the south coast of England, the most important of these being Portsmouth.
Allied forces rehearsed their roles for D-Day months before the invasion. On 28 April 1944, in south Devon on the English coast, 638 U.S. soldiers and sailors were killed when German torpedo boats surprised one of these landing exercises, Exercise Tiger.
In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allied forces conducted a deception operation, Operation Fortitude, aimed at misleading the Germans with respect to the date and place of the invasion.
Here also was our lunch stop also and the large variety of cafés/restaurants here was amazing. Once again the sun came out while we walked along the foreshore and tried to imagine the turn of events that took place here. From where we are standing England is 80kms that way, I didn't realize how close the two countries were here until now.
Another excellent day out touring.
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