Our little cottage is only about
half and hour from the D-Day landing beaches, so this morning we drove out to
Omaha Beach, one of the landing stages for the US troops. It was very cold and
blowing a gale when we got there, so we stayed long enough for the girls to get
an idea of what it was all about and then jumped back in the car and drove to
the American war cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer (which appeared in Saving
Private Ryan). We spent some time in the small museum first, watching films and
looking at the exhibits, and then walked out to the cemetery itself, where we
wandered among the grave markers for a while, slightly in awe of the scale of
it all.
We then headed for the big
E.Leclerc hypermarket outside Bayeux to stock up on all things French in
preparation for our return to the UK tomorrow. Sadly, there was no Roche Baron
cheese for Zoe, but they did have the vacuum-packed duck confit that I love so
much and I found a few bottles of wine as well (although not as many as I would
have liked – prices seem to have really jumped in the past year or so, and the
bargains just aren’t as common). I splashed out on a bottle of 1986 Chateau
Haut Bailly. Haut Bailly is one of my favourite wines and I couldn’t miss the
opportunity to try a properly mature bottle like this (just don’t ask how much
it cost).
We drove back to the house through
several hail flurries and passed the remains of an accident – someone obviously
hadn’t recalibrated their speed for the icy road and there were a couple of
banged up cars beside the road. After lunch, I began the packing process one
last time. Kate and Sarah were both feeling a bit ill by now – that bug had
finally caught up with them – and after dinner, Sarah threw up all over her
bed. I was then up until after midnight packing, cleaning and putting the
sheets out to dry.
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