In which Sid and Doris cross the marshes towards Utah Beach.
The last visit in Bayeux is to Odo’s new cathedral where his tapestry was on show until 1793.
Here you can see that the cathedral consecrated in 1077, 43 years before Salisbury was begun, has a Romanesque roundy first level in the nave. This and the crypt are all that remain of Odo’s church, the rest being mostly 1400s Gothic with transept and crossing tower. Above the first level you can see the fashionable new pointy arches.
The first few miles are mixed arable and cattle farmland. Etreham offers this tall tower and simple shape among the wheat fields.
While Miftah Bat is thrilled with this graphic warning.
For the next part of the ride, getting around La Baie des Veys is difficult because the bridges over rivers La Vire and La Douve are well inland. This meant Issigny and Carentan were important towns to capture/defend and suffered accordingly.
The area is low lying and Rommel had used the flood control gates and sluices to flood this area and all the way up behind Utah Beach, leaving only causeway roads to get off the beaches. In the early hours of 6th June US paratroopers landed at the non-beach ends of these roads. (The western beaches Utah and Omaha were US, while Gold, Juno and Sword were British and Canadian.)
Doris does great work with the maps and some dodgy tracks to get us to the La Barquette sluice, captured by Col Howard Johnson with men he gathered off the beach. Not just a sluice but, then as now, also a route to and from Utah Beach.
There is a very thorough board explaining the story which needs high resolution. It could be emailed if you would like it. The map below shows the marshes in which many heavily laden paratroopers drowned.
A major goal of the Utah Beach landings was to capture Cherbourg, a proper deep water port at the top of the peninsula. The attempt to take Dieppe directly in 1942 showed that a port is too easily defended whereas, even with the might of the Atlantic Wall, rushing a wide front gives a better chance of establishing a bridgehead to break out from.
Not far along we find a Dodge Weapons Carrier and a cat.
And because it is Miftah Bat’s day and bottoms are always funny…
Then to La Domaine Sainte Marie du Mont, an excellent place from which to visit Utah Beach.
