Arromanche

From Paris Gare du Nord it takes a train, a bus and some walking to get to Arromanche D-Day Beach. And for me it felt more like a pilgrimage then a normal trip. The train rushes away from the capital, it crosses planes and hills, covered in green and a lot of lonely cows that stare outside their lawn. As you get closer to the little town of Arromanche, you get even more excited about how is going to look like, what the memorial would be, what emotion you will feel, and then suddenly you step out of the bus, walk a step road that from the hills runs down to the sea, and you arrive at the shore.

There is not really much to do in Arromanche once you are there. If you have a car you can tour the surroundings and visit other D-day beaches, but I was moving around strictly with public transport, and so I had to choose between the little town Arromanche and the more famous Omaha Beach which is a little more to the west. There are busses for this beach too, but you cannot do it in one day if you have to go back to Paris.

Nevertheless I really enjoyed my day here.

Today the town has the typical summer-vacation style, lots of little cafes, pretty houses with gardens, and yet it faces this huge sandy beach, where such great history happened not so long ago. You can see the relicts of the temporary floating harbour that the UK and US army build to bring heavy machinery to the land. Now they are little more then rotten iron boxes, just left there as eternal memorial or because it was too much work to take them out anyway. The tide periodically floats them.

Here in Arromanche there is also a little army museum about the Normandy landing, but I spend most of my time there just staring at the sea and the tide. Walking barefoot on the wet sand, thinking about the sea in front of me, England so far away, the mans that boxed up in those container where dropped here to shoot at, and eventually the strange happiness that some general must have felt when he said something like “The land is ours”.
And then what I thought about was all the years that came after that, all the rust eating away the metal there in the sea, the water just gently polishing these structure made by man.
I stood there in the silence, looked at other Solos on the beach, ask somebody to take a picture of me and the rotten monuments. Then left to go back to the city. Nothing much to say but with a warm knot of feelings inside.

5 Tipps for Solos:

Arromanche is a perfect sunday trip. If you live in Paris or the surroundings you can go there in just under 2 hours and it makes a perfect city escape for whenever you feel annoyed by city life.
Here are some tipps that might help you out:

– Eat some typical crepes with ham and cheese on the main street. There are many little restaurant that welcome Solos and you can choose your style, more casual or more poshy

– Walk up the eastern hill and put one euro in the panoramic binoculars. From here you have a great view of the entire coast. There far to the west there is Omaha beach and the other landing’s shores. Use your inner movie theatre to see the dynamics of the operation

– Read a book about the invasion. Before or after your trip, read something about the whole secret operation, watch a documentary, anything that might give you the impression of how big the whole organisation was. As said there is a museum in Arromanche, but I must say I was not particularly in the mood on the day. Also it was really crowded.

– Don’t book in advance! This is a tipp for beginners Solos. This day trip is really easy to do from Paris. The trains are frequent and always have place for one passenger. So don’t spend too much time planning your visit. A rough look at the timetables will be enough. Let yourself be surprised by destiny!

– Visit other D-day beaches. I was in a tight travel schedule, so I had to pick only one day to go to Normandy. But if you have more time try to get also to the other historic sites. In Omaha beach there is the US monuments for the fallen soldiers (also a little hidden is the German monument, really sad that they are not equally remembered) and the place where they always do the yearly ceremony. So be inventive, go to the train station and get inspired

My SOLOTUR

– how long: 1 day
– where I started: Paris, Gare du Nord
– what I saw: modern town, old harbour, relicts, army museum, Panorama view, rising and lowering tide
– what I skipped: other costal sites, Bayeux, boat trip