For some of the Easter holidays, we headed over to France. Andy was keen to visit Normandy, so we stayed there first, and then headed to DLP for a few days on the way home.
Étretat was our first stop (we drove to the channel tunnel in the evening, crossed over and stayed in a hotel right by the tunnel (handily had car chargers in the car park) and then drove down here the next day. It was amazing, with all of these arches in the water and a fantastic clifftop walk to do.
We then stayed in Honfleur for one night (another little town fab for a wander, even with a little sculpture park by the water), before driving to our Air BnB for the next 5 ish days.
There were so many memorials to visit. We went in a few of the museums, and visited lots of the memorials, although there were lots more. History isn’t such a big interest of mine, but actually visiting the places did put things into context (for example, seeing the cliffs the soldiers had to climb up). It was a strange contrast as we had amazing weather, the beaches were beautiful, but we were reading horiffic stories.
One day we went into Bayeaux to see the tapestry, and also the amazing cathedral. One of the windows looked purple from the outside (see below), but when you went inside it was mainly yellow.
At our Air BnB the owner recommended a walk to us, around 45 minutes to a local church. I had packed my running things, so we thought we’d walk it one evening and then I might run it later. As we walked, two dogs came out of a farm, barking and jumping up at us. It was quite scary, as neither of us are really fans of dogs (especially not dogs that jump up at you)- there were no owners around and we were just on a small country lane. Eventually they settled down and just ran ahead of us, but later on a huge dog, that was barking at us from behind a fence, somehow got out and ran after us too. Luckily it didn’t follow us far, and didn’t come too close, whereas the two other dogs walked all the way back to where we were staying. Hopefully they found their way home. I decided after that to not go on a run as I didn’t fancy being on my own and being chased by those dogs, or other ones. It seems that people just let their dogs wander freely about (which seemed crazy due to the big tractors driving around the country roads with some regularity).
We had a very relaxing few days there anyway, with plenty of walks but also plenty of reading and relaxing. And of course lots of baguettes!
