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NormandyBy carBenh LIEU SONG — CC BY 2.5 (Wikimedia Commons)

Normandy

From Rouen to Mont-Saint-Michel · France

Five days of Norman coast resting on one coincidence: Bayeux is home to a seventy-metre tapestry, on loan to London until 2027, telling how William crossed the Channel in 1066 to conquer England, and ten to twenty kilometres away lie the beaches where in 1944 the same Channel was crossed in the opposite direction. In between, the cliffs Monet painted, the harbour where Impressionism began and, at the end, an abbey on a rock ringed by the greatest tides on the continent.

5 days4 nights453 km9 stopsBest season: May to September, with long days and everything open. June brings the D-Day anniversary events, which fill Bayeux and the beaches: if you want quiet, avoid the first week. Winter is harsh and windy on the coast, but Mont-Saint-Michel empty and in fog is something else.
Day 1Monet, Joan of Arc and a charnel houseDay 2Ruins on the Seine and white chalkDay 3The painters' harbour and BayeuxDay 4The sixth of June, 1944Day 5The abbey in the bay

Day 1 · Monet, Joan of Arc and a charnel house

Rouen · on foot

RouenВвласенко — CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Rouen

history

Monet painted the cathedral façade more than thirty times from the houses opposite, where he rented rooms, at different hours, to prove that the subject mattered less than the light. And ten minutes' walk away is the Place du Vieux-Marché, where Joan of Arc was burned in 1431: today a modern church shaped like an upturned boat stands there.

Tip

Look for the Rue du Gros-Horloge, with its 14th-century astronomical clock set over an arch. And the Aître Saint-Maclou, a timber-framed courtyard carved with skulls: it was a plague charnel house.

Day 2 · Ruins on the Seine and white chalk

Jumièges and Étretat · 140 km

Jumièges abbeyZairon — CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Jumièges abbey

history

Two white towers forty-six metres high and a roofless nave on a bend of the Seine. It was one of the most powerful abbeys in Normandy until the Revolution sold it as a quarry and a merchant began blowing it up with gunpowder to resell the stone. It is often called one of the most beautiful ruins in France.

Tip

You see it in a good hour and there is almost never anyone. It is on the abbey route between Rouen and the coast, so it is no detour.

80 min to the next stop · 68 km

ÉtretatJörg Braukmann — CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Étretat

viewpoints

White chalk cliffs cut by the sea into arches and needles, with the Aiguille standing off the beach. Monet painted them again and again, and Maurice Leblanc set Arsène Lupin's hideout here in 'The Hollow Needle', which is why many French visitors come.

Tip

Climb both sides: the Falaise d'Aval, with the great arch, and the d'Amont, with the chapel on top. They are short walks but uphill, and the good view is on the edge of each, not from the beach.

Day 3 · The painters' harbour and Bayeux

Honfleur and Bayeux · 93 km

HonfleurPinpin — CC BY 2.5 (Wikimedia Commons)

Honfleur

culture

A rectangular harbour ringed by very tall, narrow houses, up to seven storeys, squeezed together because quayside land cost a fortune. The light of this estuary drew Boudin, Courbet and the young Monet, and much of what became Impressionism came out of here.

Tip

The church of Sainte-Catherine is the largest wooden church in France, built by ships' carpenters with axes rather than saws after the Hundred Years' War. Inside it looks like an upturned hull.

70 min to the next stop · 93 km

BayeuxChabe01 — CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Bayeux

history

This is the home of the seventy-metre tapestry embroidered around 1070 that tells, scene by scene, how William crossed the Channel in 1066 and conquered England, although until 2027 it is on loan to London. The town still earns the stop: the Gothic cathedral and the old centre are intact, and you are ten to twenty kilometres from the beaches where in 1944 the same Channel was crossed in the opposite direction.

Tip

Bayeux was the first French town liberated after the landings, on 7 June 1944, and escaped the bombing almost intact: that is why its cathedral and medieval centre survive whole. Spend your time on the cathedral and a wander through the centre, with its stone and half-timbered houses along the River Aure.

Day 4 · The sixth of June, 1944

Omaha, Pointe du Hoc and Sainte-Mère-Église · 90 km

Omaha Beach and the American cemeteryMyrabella — CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Omaha Beach and the American cemetery

history

Eight kilometres of open sand with the bluff behind and nowhere to take cover: that is why they called it Bloody Omaha. Above, at Colleville-sur-Mer, the American cemetery lines up nine thousand three hundred and eighty-eight crosses facing west, towards home.

Tip

Go down to the beach too, not just the cemetery. At low tide the water pulls back hundreds of metres, and walking that distance looking up at the bluff explains the morning of 6 June better than any museum.

15 min to the next stop · 10 km

La Pointe du HocJebulon — CC0 (Wikimedia Commons)

La Pointe du Hoc

history

A thirty-metre headland between Utah and Omaha, fortified with guns by the Germans to sweep both beaches. In the early hours of 6 June, two hundred and twenty-five Rangers scaled the cliff with ropes and ladders under fire. Two days later ninety were still standing.

Tip

The ground is as it was left: bomb craters and blown bunkers, unrestored; only the cliff edge, which is still crumbling, has been fenced off. It is the stop where you best grasp what happened here, precisely because it has not been tidied up.

35 min to the next stop · 40 km

Sainte-Mère-ÉgliseJarosław Baranowski — CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Sainte-Mère-Église

history

The first town in France to be liberated, in the early hours of 6 June, by paratroopers who dropped onto the village while the residents were putting out a fire. One of them, John Steele, snagged on the church steeple and survived by playing dead for hours: today a dummy hangs there in his memory.

Tip

The Airborne museum is beside the square and is worth the hour it asks. And look at the church windows: one shows paratroopers descending beside the Virgin, put in after the war in memory of that night.

Day 5 · The abbey in the bay

Mont-Saint-Michel · 130 km

Mont-Saint-MichelDiliff — Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)

Mont-Saint-Michel

heritage

An abbey built on a crag in the middle of a bay, with the village coiled around the rock and the tide coming in and out twice a day. The greatest tides in continental Europe happen here: the sea can withdraw for kilometres and come back at a speed that has killed people.

Tip

Park at the mainland car park, two and a half kilometres away, and take the Passeur shuttle: it is included in the parking and free, and runs frequently from early morning until night, on a timetable that changes with the season. You can also walk, about forty minutes with the Mount ahead of you the whole way.

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