The Normandy Coast to Honfleur and Étretat from Cherbourg

Walk out onto Omaha Beach at Les Moulins and find Anilore Banon's three stainless-steel sculptures standing in the sand — the wings of brotherhood, rise freedom, the wings of hope — then turn to the signal monument behind them and pick out the two frescoes to the US 1st Infantry Division and the 116th Regimental Combat Team

From the sea wall at Arromanches, count the Phoenix caissons still lying offshore and work out what you are not seeing: the largest were 70 m long and 20 m high and weighed over 6,000 tonnes, so only their tops break the surface. Then look straight out from the village and place the quay that stood there — seven floating platforms linked into 750 m of pier, joined to the shore by two floating roadways

Find the Tapestry's own building, the 17th-century hôtel de Nesmond, and the cathedral treasury it hung in for centuries, then pick out Bayeux itself on the embroidery: scene 22 shows the walled town, and you can still trace the line of the Roman castrum through the streets

Walk the full 850 m of the castle rampart round all 5.5 hectares, counting the eleven square towers Henry I added, then find the foundations of the keep he built about 1120 beside the north gate — a castle inside the castle — and go into the salle de l'Échiquier, the great hall where Henry II received the king of France in 1158 and again in 1173

Walk across Pegasus Bridge over the Caen canal at Bénouville, the bridge taken by Major John Howard's glider troops on 6 June 1944

Walk the quays right round the Vieux Bassin, then go into the Lieutenance — the 16th-century Caen gate with its two round towers, the only piece of Honfleur's walls still standing — and find the bust of Samuel de Champlain on its outer face, who sailed from this basin

Walk the full 1,800 m of the promenade-dyke past the Bains Pompéiens and work out the beach's colour code as you go — the parasols are orange, red, blue or green by sector — and look for the nœud deauvillais, the local knot that holds each one against the wind

Walk the clifftop from the Falaise d'Aval to the Falaise d'Amont and keep looking back at the Aiguille: as you move towards Amont it slides across until it stands part-framed inside the arch of the porte d'Aval. Carry on 500 m south-west along the top first to see the Manneporte, the widest of the three

Go through the Palais Bénédictine knowing you are in the second building — the first, opened in 1888, burned on 12 January 1892 — and find in one circuit the thing it was built to put side by side: a copper still in the working distillery, and in the museum rooms above Alexandre Le Grand's own hoard of carved ivories, coins, old locks and religious paintings

Stand directly under the 107 m lantern at Saint-Joseph and follow Marguerite Huré's glass upward to see the colours change with height, then find the plaque put up on 6 September 2019 to the 3,000 people killed in the Allied bombing the church commemorates

Stand under the 97 m dome of the basilica, 28 m across and carrying a single-block cross of 1.70 m weighing close to a tonne, then look at how completely Pierre Gaudin's mosaics cover the inside — and remember that the war took two thirds of Lisieux and probably spared this building only because it was built out at the edge of town

Drive the full 40 km loop of the Route du Cidre through Cambremer, Hotot-en-Auge and Beuvron-en-Auge, stopping at a farm signed on the route to taste its cider and its pommeau, and ask which apple varieties went into the blend

Visit the Musée du Débarquement, built in 1962 on the exact spot the troops landed, and find its Martin B-26 Marauder in the hangar built for it — the type that bombed the German strongpoint WN5 five minutes before the first wave came ashore — and the Higgins LCVP landing craft beside it