9 Normandy Gold, Juno & Sword Beaches

Another French breakfast with one croissant each, etc. We had to say good bye to our most favorite hotel ever and the donkeys. We were off to visit the next 3 beaches. We should have planned to stay another day or two for these beaches. We had to fly through the other beaches and could not go to the museums. It was a sunny day and we got about 5 miles of walking in. We first went to Gold beach invaded by the British & Canadians. It contains artifacts of a floating harbor built to allow the sufficient tonnage of supplies to keep the invasion forces ahead of the Germans. These ports were constructed in safety in England, the individual pieces towed across the channel to the coast of France and quickly assembled there. We saw these only from a distance, a disappointment to me. I didn’t realize how interesting these beaches would be. We saw piles of seaweed 2’ deep, cuttle fish skeletons (I recognized from my parakeet days) and

stones with holes and lace patterns eaten by the piddocks bivalves (a clam-like creature called angel wings) their specially-adapted oval siphon are edged with fine teeth which they use to excavate burrows in rock. Juno was the next beach 30 min away. It was taken fairly easily by the Canadians and British. Today it is a resort town with hotels, condos and a fishing harbor. Monuments are scattered along the shore. Again we missed the museum.
The last beach was Sword Beach an hour and half away from Juno. This is also now a tourist beach, well used by people picking up muscles, oysters and snails for dinner. There where clouds of sea gulls. Children wearing boots searched for shells, some with nets scooping up sea creature and having a great time. The tide went out for a good 1/2 mile. This beach again was fairly easily taken by the British. We made our way to our next B&B the ‘hotel Le Domaine des Platanes’ , Bordeaux-Saint-Clairit a converted farm that had exotic animals including white peacocks, black swan, goats that looked like hay stacks from Australia and goats from Africa etc. There was no odor from all these animals, Amazing! We stayed there for 2 nights at a cost of 150 euros: a good deal, clean, neat and comfortable. Our apartment had two floors with a spiral stair case. We had another of our famous hotel picnics and hit the hay.