Guided Tour of Normandy D-Day Beaches DayTrip from Paris with transport, lunch included

Overview

A thirteen-hour guided day from Paris to the Normandy landing beaches — Pointe du Hoc, Omaha, the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer and Juno — with a professional guide and lunch at Arromanches included.

What to expect

• An early departure from Paris by air-conditioned coach.
• Roughly three hours on the road each way.
• Pointe du Hoc, where the ground still holds the shape of what hit it.
• Omaha Beach, with the defensive positions explained from where they stood.
• The American cemetery above the beach: the memorial, the chapel, the rows.
• Lunch at Arromanches, two courses and a drink, within sight of the artificial harbour remains.
• Juno Beach and the Canadian sector before the return.

The date was chosen by a weather forecast

The landing could not happen on any day the commanders preferred. It needed three things at once: a moon late enough to help the airborne drops, a low tide shortly after first light so the demolition teams could reach the beach obstacles, and a sea calm enough to launch landing craft. Those conditions coincided on only a handful of days a month.

June the fifth was the day. Ships were loaded and some were already at sea when the chief meteorologist, a Scot named James Stagg, told Eisenhower a serious depression was coming in and the fifth would be unworkable.

Postponing an operation of that size, with men already aboard, was not a small thing to advise. Eisenhower took the advice, and vessels had to be turned around.

Thirty-six hours of workable weather

Stagg came back with something better: a narrow ridge moving through would give a usable window on the sixth, before the weather closed again. It was a forecast at the edge of what the science of the time could support, and the whole operation was staked on it. Eisenhower said go.

The Germans looked at the same weather and stood down

Their meteorologists were working with far less information. The Allies held the Atlantic — the ships and stations out west that see European weather coming — and the German service could not see the ridge.

Their conclusion was that no landing was possible for several days. Senior officers left their posts. A command exercise pulled others away to Rennes. Rommel, who had spent months arguing the invasion must be stopped on the beaches, drove home to Germany to be there for his wife's birthday on the sixth.

The storm that forced a delay had also emptied the other side's chain of command.

Standing on it

The value of the guide is that these places do not explain themselves. A shallow rise on a beach means nothing until someone tells you what it took to cross it, and the cratered ground on the clifftop needs someone to say what made each hole.

Practicalities

Lunch is included and taken at Arromanches — two courses with a drink. Tell us in advance if you have dietary requirements so the restaurant is prepared.

Parts of Pointe du Hoc are subject to closure when work on the unstable cliff requires it; your guide adapts the visit on the day.

Thirteen hours with about six of them on a coach is a long day. It is what it takes to cross four sites spread along this coast and return the same evening.