“Broadsword calling Danny Boy, Broadsword calling Danny Boy”, oh hang on, wrong film. Back up a bit….

“A plan” - once again that would be overstating it a bit. More of an idea, I had some holiday to use up, so I thought that if I could grab a few days away before the end of October I might be lucky with the weather.

A quick look at Google maps and the plan firmed up a little more, get a cheap ticket for le Train, ride down to Folkstone, cross under the sea (no need to worry about bad weather) turn right and stop when I get to Normandy. I should be able to find enough there to interest me for a few days on my own.

Cheap train ticket booked. Cheap hotel booked for a couple of nights, I can sort out another cheap hotel for the other two nights once I’m there.

Say goodbye to the wife and cat on the Thursday morning and off I go…..

The weather wasn’t too bad when I set off and once I got onto the M25 it started to clear up and by the time I came to the M26 it was nice and sunny. Now I discovered a slight flaw in my plan - instead of spending the morning going South East, followed by the afternoon going South West I should have just headed north and gone to somewhere like Lancashire where the locals are friendly, and more importantly not have the sodding sun in my eyes all day long. Or gone in the summer when then sun was high enough not to be a problem. I just had to squint and bear it.

Apart from that it was a nice ride, the French motorways were pretty quiet and French drivers seem to have a clue about lane discipline unlike the idiot car drivers on British roads. But caravans and camper vans - they should just be made to travel at night.

The highlight of the ride was definitely the Pont du Normandie. I’ve been on flights which were shorter and flew lower, and did you know that it’s free for motorcycles? I didn’t but the man in the booth told me, in French. He might have been very condescending but as I could only just understand that much French who knows. The way he rolled his eyes was a bit of a give away though. I had wondered why the other bikes were taking the bicycle lane at the tolls.

Actually the bridge just before is impressive as well - you know how you see pictures of roads going up big bridges and because of the foreshortening of the telephoto lens they look really steep? Well this one looked like that and no long lenses were involved. I think I saw a sign warning about the gradient - 6%.

The voices in my head (alright, google maps in my ears) guided me to the hotel on the outskirts of Caen.

The next morning over breakfast I made some more plans. Well, I drew up a list of places that I wanted to visit, arranged them East to West and then noted whether they were places that I must visit or ones that I would like to visit if I had time. Simples. And as I’m on my own, if I don’t like my plans I can change them.

First stop of the day was at Ranville, for the Pegasus Bridge museum.

Flying a heavily laden glider from England, then after dropping the tow flying another six miles. At night. To land in a field. Without even a light to mark the field. Close enough to hop out and attack the enemy. Because if you fail it’s going to have a major effect on the liberation of  Europe.

No pressure then.

The far side (beyond the bridge) of the museum is interesting as well - a room all about the Bailey Bridge, with an interesting artefact on the wall, a Christmas card sent to the Military Engineering Experimental Establishment at Christchurch, where the Bailey Bridge was developed.

Back in the main museum building as I was having a last look round I saw a picture on the wall of a good looking fellow in the Royal Ulster Rifles and read the name underneath. A surname that I recognised because my wife is Irish and her mother had told me that they were related to that family, so I took a quick picture of him for later….

A few miles up the road is Merville battery, believed by the allies to house 155mm guns which could shell the beaches, so it was also scheduled to be attacked by airborne forces in the early hours of D-day.

I’m not sure what this is doing there, 8 miles from the sea, as according to the plaque it was recovered from the sea, but it’s a good demonstration of why you shouldn’t leave your engine in the sea.

Only about a third of the troops and weapons made it there, the rest being scattered, and they found that the guns were some WW1 vintage 100mm guns - but they were still capable of reaching the beaches.

The casemates are organised as a series of museum displays about the attack. The last one has a son et lumiere which runs every 20 minutes. When you go in, through a door arranged to keep the light out, to one side is a room decked out as a wartime barracks with a couple of dummies in German uniform, the radio playing German songs etc. Then the siren sounded to let everybody (well, let me) know that the show was about to start.

Round the other side there’s a long dimly lit corridor with some more dummies at the end grouped around a gun. The lights go out, and I’m now the only real human in the place. There’s still some light on the dummies (the ones at the end, not me) and you hear orders in German and the gun simulates firing. There’s flashes, and smoke and lots of *loud* noise. It’s realistically loud. This goes on for a few minutes, with a break for a phone call. Presumably more orders but there weren’t any subtitles so I don’t know. Suddenly there are shouts from behind me, in English. The attackers had arrived. They were projected as outlines onto a screen at the back. Now there’s the sound of machine guns being fired backwards and forwards, and I’m in the middle of it. I know it’s not real but it’s still unnerving.

Plink, plink, plink. The sound of a grenade bouncing along the corridor towards the German end. I’m now fighting rising panic, how can I get out of this enclosed space? Where is there somewhere to shelter?

Back outside, conscious that it was the middle of the afternoon, I thought that I would go back to the Pegasus Bridge and have something to eat at Cafe Gondree as it would probably be open, but when I looked in that general direction the sky was very dark and the wind was picking up so I needed to get a move on.

Getting a move on wasn’t sufficient, I met the rain and it was very heavy, so I turned around to try and outrun it. This was a complete failure as not knowing where the roads went I couldn’t keep a course that kept me away from the rain. Also I’d assumed that the rain was just showers, it wasn’t. I think I saw Noah trying to cadge a lift. To give you an idea how bad the wind and the rain were, on the windward side the space between my visor and the pinlock visor was filling up with water. It wasn’t just badly fitted, four days later at home I took the visor off and there was still water in there. This experience had now exceeded “character building” and was now deep into “why am I doing this?” territory.

At the next place where there was some shelter I stopped and asked the phone to give me directions to the hotel, then rode very cautiously (but still had a couple of crimper twitching moments) back.

The next morning there were still heavy showers but by the time I got rolling it was dry with patches of blue overhead. My intention was to go to Juno beach and work West.

When I stood on Juno beach the feeling of being where history happened was incredibly powerful. The sea behind you  limits how far back you can go (and the tide was fairly high), the sea wall and the adjacent buildings form a visual barrier in front. The images from all the films happened right here, they almost overlay what my eyes are seeing. The building in front of me should be in black and white and with the corner knocked off by a shell.

But it’s also a normal beach, people are walking their dogs, 3 people are kitesurfing (clearly riding a motorcycle in winter was just too easy for them).

However there’s no mistaking the gratitude that’s still felt.

A little further along is the Juno Beach Centre which educates people about Canadians and their role in D day. A very interesting place, although the little theatre that was showing a film must have been quite dusty because everybody coming out seemed to have got dust in their eyes.

The building itself is in the shape of a maple leaf (roughly) and roofed in titanium which gives it a really lovely clean finish.

Back on the road again heading West towards Gold beach. The terrain started to get a little bumpier here and it was a steep little descent into Arromanches-le-Bains. A nice little town which has the Musee du Debarquement (apologies for not being arsed to put all the accents in). A museum which is given over to the mechanics and structures used, Mulberry Harbours etc. It was quite busy as a bus load of American tourists had just arrived. I chatted to a couple of them who were doing Normandy, Paris, London etc. I think I preferred my schedule to theirs, but they were making the effort!

Down the steps and onto the beach again to look at something else I’d come to see - the remains of one of the Mulberry harbours. When my dad was young his father was working away from home and wouldn’t (couldn’t) tell him what he was doing. After D day he was able to tell my dad that he had been one of the labourers building the Mulberry Harbours.

Another 8k west took me to the Longues-sur-Mer battery. Originally housing four 152 mm guns. The casemates are in varying states of disrepair. The heaviest damage was caused by an ammunition explosion.

By the time I’d looked at these it was getting late in the day, the sky was looking grim, I was hungry so time to head south to Villers Bocage where I was staying.

Villers Bocage reminded me of any number of small Irish towns - everything on one main street. The owners insisted that I bring my bike into the yard at the back so that it would be safe behind the gates. I learnt an important lesson - it’s easier to manhandle a bike backwards down a slight slope and then ride it out the next day than ride it down the slight slope and swear profusely the next morning.

There was a decent looking pizza place on the corner behind the hotel which turned out to be very good - they had a proper pizza oven. But the only reason I’m telling you this is because of dessert. Dessert Normand, which I’m told by one of my French colleagues really is a traditional dessert - a couple of boules of apple sorbet in a glass, then drowned with Calvados. Properly drowned. I wouldn’t want to drive after that!

Good grief, the alcoholic haze nearly made me forget an important bit! You remember the good looking fellow from Pegasus Bridge museum? Before I went out to fill my face I’d sent the picture to my wife asking if he might be related. “Could be” was the reply, so I downloaded some more details from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website  (full name, place of birth etc.) and sent that back to HQ. When I staggered back from pizza and dessert there was a reply from my wife & brother-in-law - he was my father-in-law’s cousin. I promised that I’d go and visit him in the morning.

So after breakfast I headed back to Ranville and visited the cemetery.

Ranville is a very pretty village, and again the gratitude is obvious. The cemetery is beside the village church, a short distance from the town hall.

I think the CWGC can be very proud of the work that they do.

After a walk around some of the village it was back in the saddle to head over to Omaha Beach. Although I had nice blue skies for most of the day, it started getting windy. Very windy. Going along a nice country road a couple of cars coming the other way flashed their lights and waved to me, so I slowed down. Coming round a corner, ahead of me my side of the road was blocked by a tree that had been blown down. That windy.

You’ve seen Saving Private Ryan, you’ve played Call of Duty 2, it’s time to visit Pointe du Hoc. Even without those references it’s worth visiting.

There’s a visitors centre which sets the context for what happened and shows a short film in which veterans talk about what happened to them and their friends. Another place where the air gets very dusty. Then you can walk around, if you want there’s a smartphone app which uses GPS to give you information.

The ground is pock marked by bomb craters from softening up attacks. Pock marked is the wrong scale. These are twenty or more feet deep.

It’s not just large explosions, in this observation bunker I took a picture of the wall beyond the entrance. Any one of the bits of metal that created one of those holes would be enough to kill a person.

Some people’s attitudes are different though, before I took the first picture there were two girls standing there taking selfies. I only needed a few seconds with nobody there to take the picture, but after waiting for about five minutes, because they obviously weren’t happy with their selfies and were trying different poses, I walked away. I didn’t trust myself to say anything without being incredibly rude.

Did I mention that it was windy? Standing at the top of the cliffs it was so windy that a couple of times I was nearly blown over - but the wind was blowing onto the cliffs. The wind was so strong that when I looked at the camera, the front of the lens was covered in salt (good job I always keep a filter on.)

It was getting late by the time that I left, I only had time to visit one more place that day so decided to visit St. Mere Eglise. When I got there, I parked in a car park as far away from the trees as I could. They were waving alarmingly and I didn’t want to return to a flattened bike. The dummy paratrooper hanging from the church steeple was taking a battering.

At the ticket desk of the Airborne Museum the lady told me that I would need two hours to see all of the museum but they were closing in just over an hour. I’ve come this far, I’ll read quickly and anything that I don’t have time for, it will give me an excuse for another trip next year.

Lots of interesting things in there, and I think I managed to see most of it. I took a few phone pictures….

A Steinway that you can’t play.  It’s a wheel chock for a Jeep, to go in a Waco CG-4A glider, which Steinway also built.

When I left the wind hadn’t abated any, but the bike hadn’t acquired any arboreal additions so all was well.

Riding along the motorway in the dark a couple of thoughts struck me…

The French don’t seem to bother with cats eyes. Maybe because they are an Anglais invention they refuse to have anything to do with them, but I would be a lot happier if they did.

Here I am cruising along at 80mph, with panniers and topbox, screen all the way up but my head and neck still above that, and with a headwind that must be pushing my airspeed up to about 110 and yet the bike feels great. Nice and stable and it doesn’t feel like I’m using anywhere near full power (although I’m sure the petrol consumption was very high).

The next day it was time to go home. I’d booked a train for the evening so there was no need to rush. The wind had dropped, so today it was time for cold. I think it was about 2 degrees. I reached a point where 3 things all came together - my fingers were freezing (no heated grips), the bike was low on petrol and I was hungry - and it was lunchtime. There were services with fuel coming up, and then the next one with food and fuel wasn’t for about 50k, so time to stop.

Fuel first - 18l, the most that I’ve ever put in. Then into the services for lunch. It was very busy, because this was France and it was lunchtime, and of the two choices I went for the burger place. Everything was cooked to order and when it was ready it was really delicious. By the time I’d finished everybody had gone (it was no longer lunchtime) and they were closing up.

After that it was just sit and enjoy the ride. I came off the motorway intending to stop somewhere else, but realised that I wasn’t going to get there before they closed so back onto the motorway for the last bit to the tunnel.

When I got in just before midnight my wife was in bed asleep but the cat was pleased to see me.

Total distance for the trip was about 920 miles and fuel consumption 57.something mpg.

If you want to go on holiday, go by car. If you want to have an adventure go by bike.