La Bichurie

On June 6, 1944 – now known as D-Day – Operation Overlord, the long-awaited invasion of Northwest Europe, began with Allied landings on the coast of Normandy. The task was formidable, for the Germans had turned the coastline into an interlinked series of strongpoints, each with guns, pillboxes, barbed wire, land mines, and beach obstacles. Following an extensive bombardment of the assault areas, the Allies launched a simultaneous landing of U.S., British, Canadian and French forces on five separate beaches​

In remembering Normandy, we are paying tribute and giving thanks to those men and women who fought so we could live in freedom. Many returned home safely, many did not and of those many are still there. It is the veterans we honour, and the legacy of those lost in this and other campaigns of the Second World.

In the first few hours of the landings at Omaha Beach, the situation was so precarious that General Omar Bradley serious considered abandoning the Omaha landings. However, by the end of the day, across the five landing beaches and the airborne drop zones on the eastern and western flanks, around 156,000 Allied soldiers had arrived in occupied France. They had suffered around 9,000 casualties including 3,000 dead. German losses are not known but are estimated at somewhere between 4,000 and 9,000.

Today, there are some 27 war cemeteries in Normandy - some with as fewer than 30 graves, and one with over 20,000. Many more bodies were repatriated, and many never found at all.

Medieval monk Aubert (later the sainted bishop of Avranches) was visited by a seemingly impossible vision from archangel Michael, instructing him to build a monastery atop a rock cut off by tides twice a day. Over many centuries, his vision was made reality, and Mont St. Michel is now the second-most-visited site in France, after the Eiffel Tower.

Claude Monet’s house and gardens are like his paintings — brightly coloured patches that are messy but balanced. Flowers were his brushstrokes, a bit untamed and slapdash, but part of a carefully composed design. Monet spent his last (and most creative) years cultivating his garden and his art at Giverny, the place of Impressionism (1883–1926).

Visiting Giverny, there’s much to admire. All kinds of people flock to Giverny. Gardeners admire the earth-moving landscaping and layout, botanists find interesting new plants, and art lovers can see paintings they’ve long admired come to life.

There are few 11th century artworks as famous as the legendary Bayeux Tapestry, which is so well known that it is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage ‘Memory of the World.’ Measuring almost 70 meters long, the elaborate tapestry features an epic 58 scenes, each carefully embroidered with colored wool yarns onto a linen backdrop. Originally made in England back in the 1070s, the artwork depicts historic scenes from the Norman conquest of England, ending in the infamous Battle of Hastings in 1066

The Aval’s Door, a big arch of flint, was dug by the waves by beating the extremity of the cliff.

 The Needle (51m) is a witness of the geological past of the cliff of Etretat . By becoming famous, it has won over a universal reputation and inspired lots of painters and writers. Is It hollow and it sheltered the treasures of the Kings of France which was discovered by Arsène Lupin as it is told in Maurice Leblanc’s novel : l’Aiguille Creuse?

The childhood home of the famous couturier, is a place of memories dedicated to making known the life and work of Christian Dior, success of his fashion house.
The "Les Rhumbs" villa is surrounded by a remarkable cliff garden looking over the sea, facing the Channel Islands. Build and decorated between 1906 and 1930 by Madeleine Dior and her son Christian, it was a major source of inspiration for the couturier.

Fishing in Normandy is a fishing heaven, with its diversity of rivers, wetlands, canals, lakes and its 600KM of coastline.

Blessed with more than its fair share of rivers, the region is considered one of the best in France for salmon fishing and also for sea-trout, whilst brown trout are multiplying faster here than elsewhere nationally.

Anglers are not confined to just fishing the rivers - the lakes filled with specimen Carp, Catfish and Pike, and "marsh lands" in Normandy all tend to have good quantities of pike and other carnivorous fish.