Ten Days - France; Road Trip through Normandy, Worrall Travel R Day (WTRD) 4 , France Days 3 of 10

Road Trip through Normandy - June 10th, France Day 3 of 10

Well, I made up for sleep last night.  I was so tired I could hardly send out the blog last night and did a terrible job proof reading.  Got a kick out of re-reading it today with the typos.  Auto correct took the word monastery and split it into Money stairies.....like that made sense.  

Garyn had given me his pre-Apple Watch, Fitbit, and it had recorded only about 6 hours of sleep in the  last 72 hours. After a hot bath, I was sound asleep at 9:00.  It was still light out, and Russ was sitting outside watching the river go by.  He woke me at 8:00 pm this morning!  

Now here's a unique experience for me.  When Russ woke me I was in the middle of a crazy dream. Usually, I have no recollection of what I dream, but I immediately started recalling all of the details and it was like a Monty Python movie.  I started to tell Russ and broke into uncontrollable laughter. Poor Russ!  He just looked at me as if I had totally lost it!  Still chuckling.

Our host Christian had prepared a wonderful breakfast for us of crepes, fresh yogurt,  plum jam,
cheese, ham and of course a morning baguette and a soup-bowl-size cup of coffee with milk.  The dining table for six was set for the two of us facing the patio and river beyond.  Everything was delightful.  This would be a nice quiet place to spend a few more days.

A Meander Through the Normandy Countryside

Our broad objective is to experience the lesser traveled roads through Normandy along the coast. We drove past stately river chateaus,

wove through picturesque small villages with quaint homes and gardens,

and small towns with very narrow roads where property rights of house corners took precedence over road right away.  Sharp right turns and pull overs often required folding in our passenger side- mirrors.  Narrow streets when parked required us to pull in the driver's side mirror if we still wanted to have one when we returned.

Our first stop on the way to the coast  was in Honfleur which turned out to be quite a tourist destination and quite busy on a bright and sunny, Sunday morning.  Honfleur is a yacht harbor city that we would have loved to have sailed Worrall Wind and spent a few days.

The harbor was quaint, colorful, filled with boats and people and hosted a turn of the 20th century double decker carousel with not only horses, but cars, elephants, and airplanes.

From Honfluer we continued toward the coast

and walked along the seabed of the ebbed tide of the Atlantic on the English Channel.  The shallow beach extends a great distance to the water's edge when the tide is out.

Apparently from the danger signs posted, when the tide turns, one must scurry quickly back to shore as the incoming tide moves swiftly.

As we did not have a tide table, we did not venture too far out to do some beach combing.

A walk along this beach gives insight into how allied forces during World War II had to engineer and strategize  their Disembarkment Day (D Day).  It is a relatively calm day, but the seas here because of the shallowness are very tempestuous in foul weather.  

The two greatest  adversaries to the allied forces were the Germans and the weather that could and did adversely effect the landing.  We ate our picnic lunch late in the day staring at the sea and watching people go by and people not going by but paused in the sand.

 Close to where we ate lunch, there was a photogaphy art exhibit on the high end of the beach where the artist, Valerie Leonard  was being interviewed, for the exhibition named Black Hell about surface coal workers and scavengers in northeastern India.  The photography was amazing and the story heartbreaking.  Check out the link to Black Hell above for a slide show of her photos.  They are astunning social documentary.

By now it was late in the day and we took a very back road through the village of Nonante....well not quite.  As we came to Nonante the road was blocked by a local exhibition of old farm tractors.  We got out of the car as we could drive no farther and observed the festivities and flea market that blocked our way but provided a cultural perspective the farming community in France.

We took a recalculated route to our accommodation in a farmhouse that was established in 1690 and one of the oldest buildings is a small rock building.

 The owner Chantel is a descendant and was born in the farmhouse that was reconstructed in the early 1800 after the first was burned to the ground in the French Revolution.  We are staying in the bedroom where Chantel's mother, an artist, commemorates her birth with a painting.

In addition to running a farm guesthouse that we found on AirBnB, Chantel raises chickens, donkeys, and cattle to sell for beef and dairy cow  She has been renting rooms out since 1989.  

After getting settled in our upstairs bedroom, we drove to the town of Bayeux to see the Notre Dame Cathederal (dedicated in 1077) and to have dinner.  We enjoyed a walk around town and visiting the cathedral.

With the exception of a few other tourists, we have the closed-up town all to ourselves.

Delightful three dimensional street art at the top of this stairway.

Chantel recommended several restaurants that locals enjoy, but as it was Sunday, these restaurants were not open.  Hours here in France are very respectful of people who work, closed on Sundays, and one-two hours for lunch when the shops close down. 

We found a nice little tourist restaurant and enjoyed escargot, French onion soup, and Salad Normandy, a 1/2 bottle of Bordeaux for dinner, and creme brulee for dessert.  

Tomorrow we revisit history and D-Day in Normandy.

All is Well with the Worrall Travel Rs in France.