Walking Tours  Discount Tours  Discount Travel  Disney Tours  Balloon Tours  Themed Tours  

Normandy Beaches Half-Day Trip from Bayeux

From Bayeux you'll drive to Pointe du Hoc, where the infamous German gun position threatened the Allied ships all the way to Utah and Omaha. The site was attacked by the elite 2nd U.S. Rangers, commanded by Lt. Col. James Rudder, who scaled the cliffs to get there. With its huge fortifications blown to pieces, the important site remains as it was when the Rangers left it and looks like a lunar landscape.

You'll then drive along the coast to Omaha Beach, where soldiers of the 29th and 1st Divisions landed, fought and died. This operation was the bloodiest of the five beaches and almost failed, but the bravery of those young men turned this operation into a victory. Overlooking the eastern end of Omaha Beach, the American cemetery holds the bodies of 9387 soldiers who came from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean to liberate Western Europe from the Germans. You can see the graves of some of the 307 unknown soldiers or visit the resting places of the more famous, such as the family who inspired the film "Saving Private Ryan" or General Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

Your last stop for the day is the battery at Longues-sur-Mer. It was composed of four guns of 152 mm calibre, capable of firing shells to a maximum range of 15 miles, allowing them to reach not only Omaha Beach, 8 miles to the west, but also the British landing zone of Gold Beach, 5 miles to the east. The Allies had tried to knock out this battery with aerial bombardment leading up to the landings, but it was not until D-Day itself that the guns were finally silenced by the off-shore Allied Navies. The damage inflicted on the guns themselves can still clearly be seen today.