France
Once again I set the alarm for 8am and once more we didn't get up until after 9. After we'd both had better showers than yesterday I walked down the road to try out my French all on my own in the boulangerie. I did learn French at school, and I even managed to get an A at it in my GCSEs. But despite that, trying to string a sentence together in French is pretty terrifying. I can usually manage to translate signs and Important Notices (e.g. This tap is for washing your mussels and shoes), and understand some spoken French (so long as it's spoken slowly and preferably repeated at least twice). But the prospect of having to speak it myself usually brings on sudden memory loss and anxiety. That said, the trip to the boulangerie went smoothly, although I did have a 10 minute walk to practice how to say that I wanted 2 croissants, 2 pain au chocolate and a baguette.
After breakfast we stocked up at the supermarket and then went to top the gas guzzler's tank up. This is the second time we'd filled up in France. The first time (yesterday) we arrived at a completely empty forecourt, which was obviously not pay at the pump. I suddenly realised I didn't know what to do - did the French use American or English forecourt rules? After a few minutes of pretending to look for my purse, another car arrived and answered my question by starting to fill up straight away. But today, it was a pay at the pump only forecourt. There were no signs or Important Notices that I could translate so I just put my card in, and about 4 attempts later managed to press the right combination of buttons to get my fuel, and my card back. Hopefully we have now experienced all fuelling eventualities.
We set off towards Arromanche to visit Gold Beach. On the way, we spotted a very proud looking man taking his fluffy grey cat for a walk on a lead. He looked so happy when we slowed down to look. Then a bit later we saw another man taking his goat for a walk, using a lead and what looked like a dog harness. We made a quick getaway from that one.
We arrived at Gold beach, which is one of the beaches that the British troops landed on during the D Day landings, and is also the site of one of the floating "Mulberry Harbours" which were built by the British Navy to enable all the big ships to unload all the soldiers and big guns etc. There are still some bits of the Mulberry harbour left, and it was amazing how big an area it would have covered in 1944. The beach itself just looked like a nice beach with a few war relics left, like parts of the walkways the troops used to get to land. There were some photos on display showing what the beach looked like during the D Day landings and it really was hard to believe it was the same beach. I can't really get my head round what it must have been like.
After we'd had a look round we sat on our picnic blanket and had a nice lunch of baguette, pate, Camembert and salami, and then a nice cup of tea with a biscuit just to make sure we looked English enough.
After lunch we went to the American War Cemetery which is on the cliffs overlooking Omaha beach, which is one of the beaches that the American troops landed on. We went in the visitor centre first, but left Chris in the van as we didn't know if he'd get through security. For some reason the security was similar to that at the airport, and we didn't know how they'd feel about Pandas. We didn't want them thinking he was a bomb and him being part of a controlled explosion.
The cemetery was immaculately kept, and I didn't envy the job of the whoever has to mow the lawn. There are nearly 10,000 graves there, all with marble headstones lined up perfectly. I found the symmetry and conformity very pleasing to the eye and my inner OCD. Each head stone was either cross shaped or star shaped (for Jewish soldiers), and was engraved on the front with the soldiers name, rank, regiment and date he died. On the back near the grass was a long number. There were a few graves for unknown soldiers and they didn't have the number on the back, so we assume it was for the soldiers' dog tags.
We spent quite while walking round all the graves, but I couldn't work out any logic to how they were set out. They didn't seem to be organised by date, name, rank or regiment. We came to the conclusion that it was probably a bit of a rush job when the soldiers were buried so they were probably just in random order.
We left the cemetery at about 5.30pm and drove inland, across to the coast nearer to tomorrow's destination, Mont St Michel. We're staying near a town called Montmartin-sur-mer.
In France there are some campsites run by the local authority called Municipal sites, which are usually fairly basic but quite cheap according to my pre holiday research. Tonight's site is one such site. We arrived at the reception to find it closed, but a passer by pointed out a phone number that we needed to call. This of course filled me with panic as you can't point at things or write on bits of paper over the phone, but fortunately the warden turned up a minute later and we managed to check in, despite the fact that her English was even worse than our French. The campsite was a bargain - €9.33 for the night in a lovely quiet campsite in a woodland, and no shower tokens required!
We've been quite surprised at how many French people don't seem to speak English. I know that sounds rather arrogant and British, but I don't mean it like that. It's just that every other foreign country we've been to, most of the people who work in customer facing jobs speak English to some extent. It's just such a widely spoken language. The Scandinavians for example speak excellent English, as do the Dutch according to Claire. The Portuguese and the indigenous Welsh less so, but even then we always manage to get by without knowing a word of their language.
Anyway, we're getting pretty good at knowing the all important words and what information will be required from us at campsites.
Tomorrow we ARE getting up earlier so we can get to Mont St Michel in time to have a look round before lunch. I think our getting going will be helped along by the fact that we've only got bananas and pre-packed pain au chocolates for breakfast, and the town is too far away to bother visiting the boulangerie.
Hopefully we will finally make it to Brittany tomorrow, which is supposed to be where we're going on holiday!
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