12/9 Bonjour, France

The light and the announcement ripped me out of sleep. Still an hour until the ship sinks or something. I force myself up, shuffle to the toilet, splash some water on my face and get coffee. No, lie, that wasn’t coffee, maybe brown water. A look out the window, and wow, it looks great. Sunrise and beautiful light with the clouds on the horizon. Out onto the deck, and it feels mild to me. Maybe I’m not fully awake yet. But it feels like a nice morning, and maybe a nice day will follow. When leaving the ferry the passengers are greeted by a huge rainbow. And while everyone is waiting in line for passport control, someone suddenly taps me on the shoulder from behind and says: “You forgot something!” And I’m like “What?” “The English weather!” A mocking laugh starts at the same time as the rain, and pretty much all the bikers jump off their motorcycles and pull out their rain gear. The passport control booths are new. So new that they haven’t even got a roof yet. And everyone fumbles with the rain streaming down, pulling the passports out of their clothes. That makes my neck!!!

In the first town there’s also immediately one of my favorite shops in France: a bakery. Real bread, real baguettes, and tasty cakes. With all due love, as great a trip as it is, Britain can’t do bread. I stock up a bit, and, no, I admit it, two pieces of cake and a coffee are served immediately for breakfast. The fact that there are two is due to a notification in the status bar of my phone. It said I’ve just received spontaneous PayPal credit. Tax‑wise the donation isn’t deductible because I’m not a charity. So it’s already mean, but it does nothing. So I send a picture of the cake as a receipt, so to speak.

So, now first sort things out. I did have rough goals for France with Normandy and D‑Day, but absolutely no geographic or historical knowledge of the places. So I started by trying to give some structure to the day. First I noticed that beautiful weather, as I thought this morning, can be tossed aside. Yes, the sun is smiling, but from every second cloud there’s plenty of water falling from above. Overall it feels more like an autumn day, cold, wet, windy. In between there’s sun, but it can’t do much. All day I’m only in rain gear and also pretty wet. I manage the stunt of catching almost nothing from above. Most of it comes from the streets and gets stirred up. Accordingly the visor gets dirty even faster. When the sun finally comes out, it quickly turns into blind flying. Back to daily organization. D‑Day involved several beach sections. The “Utha Beach” section lies a few kilometres ahead of me, so it becomes my primary target. And then I remember the soldier who got stuck on a church tower with his parachute, had to endure there for a long time, pretended to be dead and was later rescued. Was that place perhaps here in Normandy? My memories of the film led me, but in reality he ended up in German captivity, from which he later escaped. But actually, the site of the event was even in the immediate vicinity. So the first intermediate goal was booked. To my disappointment, the mentioned church tower, or rather the church square in front of it, was a hot spot for mass tourism. You know, the bus‑like kind. So I quickly hustled through, photographed the parachute doll that hangs there as a monument, and got out fast. Next to me stood an American who was just taking the top off his original 1940s Jeep. I greeted him and wanted to ask if I could photograph the Jeep. I didn’t get to ask, because his look killed me on the spot. When I counted to ten and opened my eyes again, he was gone. It was the death stare, ruthless and cinematic. What a clown, I thought. Anyway, on to “Utha Beach”, to the D‑Day museum. In the German opponent’s section a lot of devotional items with swastikas were displayed. I’ve never seen so many, and some quite large, swastika flags piled together. I don’t know, but in Germany this stuff probably isn’t displayed so offensively. The rest is a lot of what you already know from countless World War II documentaries on TV. For me it’s interesting to see the landing craft in original form and get an idea of what it means to go into open muzzle fire with them. The beach itself doesn’t show much of the past anymore, aside from a few monuments and sculptures. Dozens of bunkers, like in Denmark, are not visible here.

After the war “culture” now comes planning phase part two. What to do with the rest of the day, where to go, and if so, why. The idea was to go north around Paris and later maybe back up to the coast and visit one of those infamous V2 and V3 launch bunkers. So I mapped out a route south of Caen. Then there was only one problem, and it was right in front of me, or rather it moved directly into my line of travel. A big fat dark cloud, and the roads were still wet from it. If I drive at my normal speed I’ll drive right into it. So I only go 50 km/h on the country road, but that is totally exhausting. The roads here are far from as varied as on the island. Somehow nothing makes sense here. The mix of fatigue and cold‑wet weather now leaves only one decision: I can’t accomplish anything today, I could use a nap, maybe also a shower. I stop my drive and fire up the overnight planner. First, despite the weather, I even look for wild‑camping spots, but the area looks bleak. And what will the prices for fixed accommodation with a bath be here? Aha, much more moderate than the past days. Then my tired eyes spot an offer with a bathtub, which I instantly know is right for me. The direction is now different, but that doesn’t matter at all. About 40 km, with sun and rain at the same time, I backtrack once more and end up in a two‑storey apartment, which is probably the nicest and at the same time the cheapest accommodation of my trip so far. Camping sites excluded. Here you can relax wonderfully. I have to finish, the bathtub is calling …