Wednesday, July 1

Another early day, today we boarded our bus at 8:00 for a trip to the village of Entretat, which lies about 50km north of Honfleur. This is a drive through rural France, avoiding the A roads (similar to US interstates). We begin, though, with a trip across the Pont du Normandie, which was the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world when it was constructed. It spans the Seine River near its mouth in the Atlantic.

Entretat is a scenic little village situated in a crease in the cliffs and bluffs that overlook the coast. Much like Arromanches, which we visited yesterday, it was largely untouched by the war. That doesn’t mean the buildings there are ancient – it has been subjected to large floods over the years. Still, many structures are a couple of centuries old. Some of them, though, are called “true fakes”. This describes some of the oldest buildings, which were built elsewhere, dismantled, shipped to Entretat, and reassembled here. They are truly old, but are fake because they’re not original to Entretat.

At the edge of the town, we disembarked from the bus and climbed onto a wheeled train that took us up to the heights to the east. We are here to see the view, a monument, and a church, but there are dairy cows here, and somebody started asking the guide questions about them. So we all walked up to the fence and learned about Normandy dairy cows. The guide said it was the first time anybody paid so much attention to the cows.

A few yards away from the cows, we find the Monument “L’Oiseau Blanc” – Nungesser et Coli. Charles Nungesser and François Coli were French World War I aces. In 1927, they attempted to be the first to fly non-stop from Paris to New York City. They disappeared not long after crossing the coast here. The monument consists of a concrete platform in the shape of an airplane, along with a triangular spire reaching westward.

Alongside the monument is the Cappelle Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde. This church is closed except for one day a year. It has a few interesting architectural details, including fish-head-shaped ornaments on the roof rafters. Both of these overlook the village and the limestone cliffs to the west. There’s a footpath from here down to the beach, which I’d have loved to take, but it was not on the cards.

After the train ride back down the hill, we walked through the streets to the waterfront. The buildings fronting the beach are all new since the Second World War. When the occupation began, the Germans demolished all the buildings along the beach and built fortifications, which are still in existence, including machine gun bunkers and anti-tank walls. France’s northern coast is lined with derelict bunkers and gun emplacements and anti-tank walls. They have no utility. They’re ugly. And they’re too big to economically demolish.

Naturally, I had to walk on the beach. It was blustery, not exactly beach weather. I was happy we brought our jackets. A guy in surfing pants and a hi-vis t-shirt went out into the water. Brrr.

The beach here is stone, inch or inch-and-a-half. This is what Omaha Beach was on D-Day. Today, Omaha Beach is sand, not a stone to be found. In the weeks after D-Day, the Allies used all the stone on Omaha Beach to make roads. If your military is going to fundamentally change the landscape, I think it’s better to use their beaches to build roads than to build indestructible, ugly, brutalist sculpture.

We retraced our steps through Entretat and embarked on the bus for our next stop: Chateau du Bec. I found the place fascinating. A fellow named Jeremy purchased it only three weeks ago. He had worked with the previous owner for several months, so he was quite familiar with the buildings, grounds, and operations.

The 10th-century chateau is, unusually, situated in a valley rather than on top of a hill. Tactically, it is critical to hold the high ground. But sometimes, other factors prevail. In this case, the chateau is on the site of some significant springs, the source of the local river.

Normandy has a lot of Viking history. Norman is “north men”. When the chateau was first built, it was fortified. This was a strategic location in the conflict between the King of France and the Vikings. A deal was struck such that the Vikings could have the area as long as they didn’t sail up the Seine and attack Paris.

The chateau was defortified centuries ago and has undergone a series of enhancements and extensions. The stone that made up the walls was used to add on to the main house as well as the outbuildings.

Before we went inside, Jeremy gave us a tour of the immediate grounds – the springs and a couple of the ponds. The grounds are kept wild, other than an area of lawn around the ponds where a few sculptures stand, including a five-foot-tall mouse looking with some trepidation at a similarly large mousetrap.

Inside, we were fed and entertained. Jeremy introduced us to Jerome, who gave us a demonstration of a pottery wheel and a lecture on porcelain, earthenware, and pottery. In the room where we mainly congregated, Patrick, a Senegalese musician, played his kora and sang. I declined the opportunity to throw a bowl on the wheel, but Patrick let me pick a couple of notes on his kora. It’s a home-made traditional African instrument, but with pickups for his amplifier.

The food was delightful. We had about a dozen different sorts of hors d’oeuvres. Jeremy described each one. One was a miniature hot dog, reimagined by a French chef. Another was in a little bowl made of hash brows. I liked some better than others, but I’d have any of them again. Delicious. We also had wine and champagne. The next course was cheese, 8 or 10 varieties, mostly local, with some bread and jams. Finally came the little desserts – one rum-flavored, one lemon, and a few chocolate. Again, I had one of each and will testify to their tastiness.

Jeremy was quite personable. I managed to chat with him a few times during the nearly four hours we were there. I asked some general questions about the upkeep involved in maintaining such a structure. He chuckled, said he didn’t really know much about repointing stone and rendering the exterior walls, and concluded with, “It’s a little scary, but that’s how you know you’re alive!” His face lit up.

Jeremy’s final treat for us was some home-made limoncello. The woman he bought the chateau from lives in Sicily and has a lemon orchard. She sent him 75 kilos of lemons, and he used some of them to make a batch of this digestif. I’m a simple man – generally, beer is my only alcoholic treat. Here, on restaurant menus, I see apéritifs and digestifs. An apéritif is an alcoholic beverage usually served before a meal to stimulate the appetite, while a digestif is served after a meal, traditionally believed to aid digestion. Limoncello is a digestif.

I admit I was disappointed yesterday with not getting enough time on the D-Day beaches. If I had planned the trip myself, I’d have been sure to spend more time there. On the other hand, I’d never have been able to come up with today’s activities. Today was quite enjoyable and is a big offset for yesterday’s disappointment.

Back in Honfleur, we were on our own for dinner. We went to a place that one of the other couples in the group recommended. Genae had a chicken dish while I had beef carpaccio. I didn’t really know what I was ordering, and that’s part of the appeal. I thought it was a dinner salad; the menu said arugula, beef, and shaved parmesan. It turns out it’s typically an appetizer, and I didn’t realize the beef would be raw. Adventures in dining! Afterward, we wandered through the old part of town until we found some ice cream for dessert.

One little side note. I love seeing all the cars we don’t have here. I’m not a fan of giant SUVs and pickup trucks, so I enjoy seeing the smaller cars. One I kept seeing is a little two-seater. I saw a few of them, all in a sort of primer gray. Walking down the sidewalk, we came across three teenagers getting out of one. I didn’t see how they were all in it, but it must have been a tight (and unlawful?) fit. I asked them if it’s electric. They didn’t speak any English, so one got his phone out and typed into a translator app. It took him a few tries to craft his answer, which was, “It runs on sperm.” It is, indeed, an electric vehicle, a Citroën Ami. I asked Rainer if, perhaps, the kid had made a typo, but he shook his head and smiled. They were having some fun with me.