The area is steeped in WWII history. Capturing the peninsula was critical to the success of the Allied invasion of Europe in the summer of 1944.
We took a slightly roundabout route to take in the historic sights, including towns, villages and châteaus recently made famous in Band of Brothers, a TV show based very closely on the activities of the 101st Airborne during WWII.
That day was a wake up call to me. We started the day with a cup of coffee in a small cafe in Cherbourg and stopped for lunch in Valognes (I think, just guessing looking at the map). We did the maths later on that day, and there was no chance our budget was going to stretch to frivolous coffee and croissants from cafes each day! We would be living on a budget, and that meant eating from supermarkets whenever we could.
The second, more pressing, revelation, was that I definitely wasn't ready for the ride! that ride, at 80km, was the farthest I'd ever cycled in my life and it ruined me! When we eventually found a camp site (after a long and confusing conversation with a local guy in Carentan), we set up the tent and tried to make up for a diabolical evening sleeping in chairs on the ferry.
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