4 or 5 day tour of the Normandy Invasion Beaches

Sailing from Portsmouth we follow the invasion route to land on Sword Beach, not in a landing craft, but the morning or overnight ferry to the eastern flank of Sword Beach at Ouistreham.

 

The area has several very good museums and related visitor attractions to help interpret the events of 6th June 1944. Besides exploring the beaches and remaining defences, the tour will also take in a selection of the following locations detailed below. Those marked with an asterisk are determined by the group’s interest. Rather than simply a general tour, the opportunities exist to research a particular unit and then follow their fortunes on to and off the invasion beaches.

Longues Sur Mer.

A battlefield walk to view all the structures of a major German Artillery Battery on the cliff top complete with its guns.

The new ‘Pegasus’ bridge replacing the original now preserved in the museum

Tours are further enhanced with the use of original archive film shown en route to a particular location on three video screens in the minibus.

Numerous original photographs are used to place the group in context on an exact location. These are enlarged to enable you to study the scene ‘then and now’. A Glider on the bank of the Orne Canal (above) and (left) Canadian burials in a temporary burial site just off Juno Beach.

Merville Battery.  Preserved concrete gun emplacements and museum. British parachutists stormed the battery in the early hours of the morning.

 

Benouville and Pegasus Bridge.  Preserved bridge and excellent museum detailing the daring British glider assault to capture the 2 bridges over the Orne river and canal in the early hours of D Day. The bridges were captured successfully and held until supporting troops arrived from the Sword Beach. We usually lunch in one of the first houses to be liberated!

 

Ranville village and Military Cemetery. The first casualties on land.

 

We tour along the foreshore of the British and Canadian beaches -Sword, Juno and Gold - using contemporary accounts and official histories to bring the events and many individual stories to life.

 

On Sword Beach the German Flak/Artillery Command Centre provides an excellent example of blockhouse construction with several floors recreated as it appeared in 1944.

 

On Juno Beach we will follow the story of Charlie One, a Churchill tank and one of ‘Hobart’s Funnies’, a specially modified Royal Engineers tank to clear the obstacles and get the infantry off the beach. A battlefield walk linking the story of the tank crew to the events on the beach.

 

On Gold Beach we follow the landing of the 6th and 7th Battalions Green Howards and their route off the beach towards the village of Crépon

Anti-tank shell impacts pepper a steel forged observation post.

‘Charlie One’ preserved on Juno Beach

Bayeux The first major town to be liberated. A large Commonwealth War Grave Commission Military Cemetery and the main museum for the Battle of Normandy complete one of earlier walks on a beach. There is also an opportunity to visit a reminder of another Norman Invasion.

Arromanches and the Mulberry Harbour. Driving along the coastal road adjacent to Gold Beach you will watch an archive film of the Mulberry Harbour being constructed and going to war. If my driving is timed well, the film will end as the harbour comes into view from the cliff top, or I can slow down a bit if necessary! Excellent museum for interpreting the construction and use of the temporary harbour with dioramas, walk on the beach and cliffs to view the harbour, visit 360° cinema for an exciting interpretation of events.

Designed to only last for 6 months, the remains of the concrete caissons make an impressive display as they arc round the shore

Omaha Beach

 

Described as a difficult beach to take with its exits overlooked and heavily defended, we will examine these defences very closely before examining the circumstances which very nearly led to complete disaster. Using original diaries and official dispatches, we follow the men and events as the jumbled chaos on the foreshore slowly secured the beach-head. The visit concludes with a walk off the beach to the military cemetery on the cliff top.

Pont du Hoc. Site of a major German battery pounded by both naval guns and air attack, the location was also attacked by the American Rangers on the morning of 6th June.

The Germans had, however, removed the guns and positioned them further inland, the American Rangers successfully located and disabled them before having to fall back to the cliff tops, desperately holding off counter-attacks for nearly three days before supporting troops from Omaha Beach could relieve them.

Utah Beach and the American Airborne Attacks.

 

The struggle of the airborne troops in securing the hinterland of the Utah invasion beach, a visit to the museum in St Mere Eglise to view a DC3 transport plane and glider before driving to the beach.

 

La Cambe German Military. Cemetery with the bodies of 21,500 men who fell in fighting in Normandy

Above: an attacking soldier’s view of a machine gun bunker.

 

Below: the machine gunner’s view of the beach

Normandy tours are based in Bayeux either in the Lion d’Or or Churchill hotel. Crossing the channel is via Portsmouth to Caen or Dover to Calais.