The D-Day Beaches and Bayeux from Cherbourg

Editor's note

One night by Utah Beach, where about 21,000 men of the US 4th Infantry Division came ashore on 6 June 1944 with only 197 casualties. The museum stands where they landed, with a B-26 Marauder bomber and a Higgins landing craft inside, and the dunes and beach run out in front of it. At Sainte-Mère-Église, look up for the dummy paratrooper on the church tower, where John Steele hung for two hours, then see the Waco glider and the C-47 in the Airborne Museum, opened in 1964.

Editor's note

Three nights for the beaches and Bayeux. Walk Omaha Beach at Colleville-sur-Mer and the American Cemetery above it, with 9,388 graves, then the Pointe du Hoc, the 30m cliff the US Army Rangers scaled, still pocked with bomb craters. Off Arromanches, parts of the Mulberry harbour are still visible, and at Longues-sur-Mer four 150mm naval guns stand in their casemates. Bayeux has its cathedral, consecrated in 1077, the Battle of Normandy museum and the largest Commonwealth war cemetery of the Second World War in France. The Tapestry itself is at the British Museum in London until 11 July 2027, and its museum here is closed until autumn 2027.

Editor's note

The last night is back in Cherbourg, before the crossing home. The old transatlantic terminal, the largest Art Deco monument in France, now holds the Cité de la Mer: go aboard Le Redoutable, France's first ballistic-missile submarine and the only one of its kind open to visitors, and find the Archimède bathyscaphe and the 10m cylindrical aquarium. Climb to the Fort du Roule, 117m above the harbour, where the Liberation Museum opened on 6 June 1954. On the Quai Alexandre III, the umbrella makers show how the Parapluie de Cherbourg is made.