Biking Day 21

• Length ridden: 94 km
• Ascent: 275 meters (well, the terrain next to the coast is mostly flat in Normandy)
• Rating: 6.5 out of 10 - not so interesting scenery that day
• Highlights: Seeing Caen completely asleep
• Lowlight: The stolen charger (plus cord, plus plug)
• Map of the day

By now, the secret spies trying to follow me thought that I would think that they would think that I will follow the coast, as I had ridden inland the previous day, so they would try to follow me inland on this day, but I really managed to confuse them and lose them when I decided to follow the coast on this day. Ha! This was the reason why no one was following me that day. I am not schizophrenic but who are all those people following me??

I left around 7:30 and did a few more rounds in downtown Cannes.

I then headed for the ferry terminal at Ouisterham. Until that very moment, it was not the secret agents, but me who was confused as to whether I was going to make the crossing. Due to my weak storytelling, all my readers will by now know that I would stay in France, but on that faithful morning, it was still very much unclear to me. The websites were a bit confusing regarding the possibilities of the crossing and I thought it is better if I check out the situation in person. So I found out I could have crossed to the UK from there, to Portsmouth, but this crossing would have cost somewhere around €130. Moreover, it was finally quite good weather in France and the outlook for Ireland was rather poor. Weighing these facts with my new-found love for France, I decided to stay - at least for now - after all, I was close to the D-Day landing beaches, which I always wanted to visit.

It was so that I landed on the beaches of Normandy D-Day landing. Two things are worth mentioning. First, despite having read about this faithful manuveur, I falsely thought that the beaches were just a few, or maybe a dozen or so, kilometers apart. No way, the landing zone for the five beaches stretches over 80 kilometers! Second, it was definitely a huge military maneuver, probably the largest in history and all my respect goes to both those planning, and especially those fighting it. Yes, their stories need to be told, should be commemorated and not forgotten. Still, I had the feeling that this effort, the suffering and immense loss of human life has become a bit of a Disneyland show. Yes, I endorse all the museums and the bunkers, but having pubs being called "Captain Jack's Pub" or people driving around and sightseeing in Jeeps from 1940s is on the verge of tasteless. I myself felt a bit strange for having taking a dip the Channel right in the middle of Omaha beach...hmmm...I wondered about the terrible scenes 80 years (plus a month a and half) ago. Apparently, I am not alone with this thinking, I saw a couple of signs saying "War is not a show". I did not have to search long to find this article.

Ah, one more thing. It was the 80th anniversary, as you will by now know. One thing I thought was rather cool - all over the coast were flags with the names of of different soldiers, who did something heroic - that is a nice gesture.

Right in Ouisterham, my D-Day show began with "Le Grand Bunker". There was an interesting story about it. Soon after the landing, some fifty German soldiers were stuck in the bunker and were surrounded by 3 (yes, three) American GI's. They Germans surrendered to these three soldiers, inviting them "You can come up " in perfect English, but the Americans wanted the Germans to come down, which they did.

What I did find impressive were the original weapons, some retrieved from the sea, rusting away.

The coast of Normandy is nice, but as I would see later, the one in Brittany is a lot prettier.

Next to the paved road with scarce traffic was an unpaved bike path, so I went for the road - this was not appreciated by quite a few drivers, some honked (for the second and final time on this trip), others showed me the finger. Borrowing a phrase from German, they can do me a favor.

I spent a few minutes thinking how to tell the story of this day, but I decided just to past in a few photos reminding us of the D-Day landing - as it would be far too detailed to write about every beach - and this blog is about biking, not war.

In the afternoon, I went in for a swim at Omaha Beach, the Channel was cool, but not cold. The previous time I was at sea was in Georgia in May (the Black Sea in Batumi).

Each landing beach was quite large, Omaha beach, for example, encompasses not less than four villages, which look pretty much alike. After my swim, which was around the second beach, I was quite confused seeing the third village, thinking I somehow took a wrong turn and was back at the first one, it looked like an exact replica. All over the place were all kinds of smaller and larger museums, plaques, statues, flags - all commemorating the events 80 years prior to this.

In the afternoon, I got to a large American War Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer where close to 10,000 soldiers are buried, some Jewish, most Catholic.

I had some wonderful views of the Channel in the late afternoon/early evening.

At Grandcamp, I discovered a plaque proudly proclaiming that Georges Seurat, one of my favorite painters, visited that town at the end of the 19th century to paint a beautiful pointillistic work of art.

At Isigny-sur-Mer, I had my next disappointment with French cuisine. I treated myself to a galette at a crêperie, asked them to put a lot of cheese in it (after seeing a large cheese factory in that town). They were very friendly, it was a family business, with them working busily to serve the full-house of guests - they explained the cheese was actually not from there; fine, whatever, but they also put some (literally) stinking sausage in it, making the whole thing just shy of disgusting. No luck with French food, yet again. McDo remained my favorite. Of course, almost needless to say, their pastries are amazing...and French do love to queue up for these...there are a large number of bakeries, sometimes right next to each other even in not-so-large towns - and I have yet to encounter a bakery without a line of people.

At least there were some nice views to compensate me for the mediocre food.

On this day, I had only covered four of the five landing beaches, namely Sword (British), Juno (Canadian), Gold (British) and Omaha (American). Utah Beach (American) was still ahead of me. (In brackets are the nationalities of the landing forces in 1944). You can imagine just how large the landing area was.

I arrived at a campground in Insigny at 9:30 pm, the reception of which was closed. It was located next to a small lake, which had a bit of a strange odor, but one got quickly used to it (like in the camping car a day ago). There were only a couple of tents, most folks were with their camping cars. I pitched my tent and was going for the showers. On the way there, two teenager boys started talking to me, asking me where I was from, how riding in France was - they were polite and well-behaved, but now, looking back, something felt fishy. Usually, teenagers mind their own business and do not communicate with fifty-plus-year-olds. I was glad to have a conversation in French and it went quite well. I cleaned up and left my cell-phone charger the bathroom to fill up - one that I had purchased just a couple of days ago, for it to fill up. I have done this plenty of times, leaving even my cell-phone, my smart-watch - and never did anything disappear.

Technically, this belongs to the following day, but I woke up in the wee hours and thought about charging my second external battery. I go to the bathroom - and no charger was to be seen. It was quite a bad feeling, not so much due to the monetary value, but that someone would take the belonging of another person.

In the morning, I asked my tent neighbors if anything had seemed suspicious to them during the night, they said they saw two young teenagers smoking and being rather loud. I will never know for sure if it were the two boys I had talked to, they seemed so polite and mellow, it could have been anyone else. If it was them, they must have taken some drugs, gotten high and then could no longer differentiate between right and wrong - it was wrong, no matter who did it.

At the beginning of the blog, provided you have read it, I discussed at length the importance of electric equipment, as it wasn't just the charger, but also the cord and the Samsung plug that was now in the "wrong" hands and these were a bit of a nuisance to replace. During the entire journey, I had quite a hassle at having a working cord - these break easily - and the average plug which you can buy in a supermarket charges considerably slower than the Samsung supercharger. As mentioned earlier, it is high time to look after some more advanced technology or solution for the charging operation.

It was about 94 km`s that I had ridden that day.