Our plans for today had been a bit fluid. The main thing we wanted to see was the parachute drop that was planned to happen at the Azeville Battery , but the timing of the drop had been moving around like a parachute on a windy day! In the original program for the 80th events it was stated the drop would be at 11am. It was being done by the Round Canopy Parachute Team, an American based group whose aim is increase awareness and educate the public about the sacrifices and heroism of Allied Paratroopers from WWII onward.Id been following them on Facebook for a while and a few weeks ago they’d announced the time of the June 5 jump had been moved to 1pm, so Neil and I planned to visit the Overlord Museum and camp this morning before heading to Azeville.
Fortunately I checked Facebook when we were having breakfast… the first jump had been shifted back to 10am! Luckily we had woken early! So we rapidly washed up and packed up and hit the road, because we knew that the parking would be limited and that our experience of the DDay festival traffic made us keen to get there as early as possible, but the distance meant we’d arrive at 9.30 – cutting it close. We were a few km away when we joined a queue of traffic streaming to the event, at Azeville there were signs directing the traffic onto a tiny road winding around the fields where the parking area was….and then we ground to a halt.
For 15 minutes we went nowhere and people in cars around us climbed out and started walking up the road to see what was happening. Finally we crawled forward…to find that these people were directing traffic at the bottleneck that had cause the problem! No signs of any officials…But we’d made it! Parked and walked rapidly up the road to the battery to join the crowd with eyes craning to the sky.
We were a bit amazed at the setup, there were food trucks and merchandise stalls a plenty. We’d been expecting cows and grass! Finally we spotted the c-47 planes in the distance. They did a fly around before returning and as they passed over the parachutists streamed from the planes. It was a beautiful site to see them floating gracefully to the ground, and they were met with cheers and clapping. After a short interval the planes returned to drop a second wave .
We left the field and walked over the road to take a look at Camp US, a sizeable re-enactment camp with an extensive array of jeeps, trucks, tents, foxholes and pseudo-soldiers .
The next half hour was a bit hair raising. As we’d left the field and again as we left Camp US we’d been amazed at the crowds of people who were still streaming into the Battery. We figured many of them must be unaware that the jump was over and felt sorry for their disappointment. However as we drove out and away down little roads we passed hordes of people still walking in and cars parked higgeldy piggledy on the side of the road with people standing next to them looking to the skies. The roads became worse and worse with people just stopping and blocking traffic and we struggled to find our way out of the mess! And still not an official or a gendarme in sight ( despite the fact that we’ve seen hundreds of gendarme riding around on their motorcycles over the last few days)
Finally we escaped and decided to head to the Normandy Victory Museum at Carentan. It was also very busy and crowded but we found a park easily and enjoyed the displays inside and out.
We grabbed a hotdog from one of the food trucks before heading to check out another reenactment camp called Purple Heart Lane. This one was very small, just a few displays so we didn’t stay long before setting out towards Barneville-Cartaret where we are spending the next 2 nights. It’s a small seaside town on the coast and was the closest I could find to the D Day beaches for the night of the 5th and 6th. We checked in to our hotel and Neil carried the bags up to the second floor, no lift! However our pretty little room has a lovely view over the bay and there’s a lovely garden out the bag where we enjoyed a glass of wine before dinner and bed. We have a very early start tomorrow!
