Honfleur to just outside of Caen

After yesterday's post I made my way along the coast towards the ww2 landing beaches. I'm just east of sword beach, which is the eastern most beach.

Yesterday I stopped in at Pegasus Bridge. It was one of the first objectives to be taken on D Day and was important because it guarded the eastern flank of the landing sites.

I know this won't be interesting to most people so I'll keep it brief, but I think it's amazing. To take the bridge six gliders flew in from 6 miles away and landed almost exactly where they were supposed to behind enemy lines (although one went to a bridge 7 miles away) just after midnight. They took the bridge within 10 minutes, then set up defences for a counter attack. The counter attack came in the form of a Panzer division, but they fought them off with some difficulty. Eventually they were reinforced by paratroopers, then some commandos who had landed at sword beach managed to break through and link up with them.

The bridge is still there, although not over the river anymore. It's sitting out the back of the museum. They also had a replica of a Horsa Glider which was cool. They don't look too sturdy.

A lot of the stuff in the museum was found by local people long after the war. There was an anti tank gun that was found by a bloke when he was trimming his hedge in the 70s. He needs to trim his hedges more often. Another bloke found a tank, although that was only a few years after the war ended. Still, if I found a tank at Kinchela I'd keep it.

I couldn't stay at the museum for as long  as I liked because I needed to get to the camp site 4 hours before the sun went down. I only needed the camp site to charge my battery. I'm yet to meet a French person capable of doing this for me. They say they can, but they either take the battery off charge after half an hour or they knock the plug out. So I'm wasting more time in McDonald's. Each time I've been in McDonald's it has been because a French person has let me down (except twice, when the battery went flat).

The plan for today is to sit in McDonald's for hours then go to the Lidl bread section and feast. Then it will probably be time to find a camp site so a fat fingered receptionist can plug my charger into the wall and the plug into the air.