La Vélomaritime - EuroVelo 4

Duinkerke

It is very strange that Hitler waited three days to take Dunkirk. That would have probably given the English the final blow. As a result, the British troops were pulled out from Dunkirk. One theory why Hitler waited is that he wanted Herman Goering to demonstrate how efficient his new Luftwaffe could take the city and not let the honor go to the Wehrmacht.

Author:

Dunkirk evacuation

The Dunkirk evacuation, code-named Operation Dynamo and also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers during World War II from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between 26 May and 4 June 1940. The operation commenced after large numbers of Belgian, British, and French troops were cut off and surrounded by German troops during the six-week Battle of France. In a speech to the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called this "a colossal military disaster", saying "the whole root and core and brain of the British Army" had been stranded at Dunkirk and seemed about to perish or be captured. In his "we shall fight on the beaches" speech on 4 June, he hailed their rescue as a "miracle of deliverance".
After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, France and the British Empire declared war on Germany and imposed an economic blockade. The British Expeditionary Force was sent to help defend France. After the Phoney War of October 1939 to April 1940, Germany invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and France on 10 May 1940. Three panzer corps attacked through the Ardennes and drove northwest to the English Channel. By 21 May, German forces had trapped the BEF, the remains of the Belgian forces, and three French field armies along the northern coast of France. BEF commander General Viscount Gort immediately saw evacuation across the Channel as the best course of action, and began planning a withdrawal to Dunkirk, the closest good port.


Author:

Cap Blanc-Nez

Cap Blanc Nez is a cape on the Côte d'Opale, in the Pas-de-Calais département, in northern France. The cliffs of chalk are very similar to the white cliffs of Dover at the other side of the Channel in England. Cap Blanc Nez does not protrude into the sea like a typical cape, but is a high point where a chalk ridge has been truncated by the sea, forming a cliff that is topped by the obelisk of the Dover Patrol Monument, commemorating the Dover Patrol which kept the Channel free from U-boats during World War I.
Cap Blanc Nez was a vital measuring point for the eighteenth-century trigonometric survey linking the Paris Observatory with the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Sightings were made across the English Channel to Dover Castle and Fairlight Windmill on the South Downs. This Anglo-French Survey was led in England by General William Roy.

Author:

Column of the Grande Armée

The Column of the Grande Armée is a 53 metre high Corinthian order triumphal column on the Rue Napoleon in Wimille, near Boulogne-sur-Mer, France.
The column was intended to commemorate a successful invasion of England , but it now commemorates the first distribution of the Imperial Légion d'honneur at the "camp de Boulogne", by Napoleon to the soldiers of the Army of England. In September Marshal Soult informed the emperor of the army's wish to erect such a column and for its site the town of Boulogne bought the estate of the old royalist, the widow Delahodde-Fourcroy, who reluctantly ceded her field for a monument to the man she called "the usurper". The commission created for its construction took on the architect Éloi Labarre, the bronze-caster Houdon and Jean Guillaume Moitte for the bas-reliefs, and the army, flotilla, soldiers, sailors and sous-officiers all gave a half-day's pay to the project once a month.

Author:

Dieppe

A few things you should know about Dieppe: Dieppe was an important prize fought over during the Hundred Years' War. Dieppe housed the most advanced French school of cartography in the 16th century. It was the premier port of the kingdom in the 17th century. During the later nineteenth century, Dieppe became popular with English artists as a beach resort. Prominent literary figures such as Arthur Symons loved to keep up with the latest fads of avant-garde France here. Louis de Broglie, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, was born in Dieppe.

Author:

Château de Dieppe

The castle was founded in 1188, and was destroyed in 1195. The site was restored in the 14th century. The castle was later in large part reconstructed in 1433 by Charles des Marets. The castle is composed of a quadrangular enclosure with round flanking towers and a lower court adjacent. The large west tower dates perhaps from the 14th century, and served as the keep. Several architectural styles are represented, and flint and sandstone are used in the buildings. A brick bastion and various other buildings have been added to the original enclosure.
The town walls were built around 1360. The walls were extended between 1435 and 1442. Although the town was largely destroyed by an Anglo-Dutch naval bombardment in 1694, the castle survived.

Author:

Dieppe

Dieppe is a coastal community in the Arrondissement of Dieppe in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. The population stood at 34,670 in 2006.
A port on the English Channel, at the mouth of the Arques river, famous for its scallops, and with a regular ferry service to Newhaven in England, Dieppe also has a popular pebbled beach, a 15th-century castle and the churches of Saint-Jacques and Saint-Remi. The mouth of the Scie river lies in the Canton of Dieppe-Ouest at Hautot-sur-Mer.

Author:

The needle of Etretat

L'Aiguille d' Etretat or the The needle and natural arch of Etretat is one of the most spectacular cliff views of France. It has been used in many movies. One of them was the French movie about Arsène Lupin, featuring the fabulous Kristin Scott Thomas. The creater of the character, author Maurice Leblanc, lived in a house in Etretat.

Author:

Honfleur

Honfleur is a commune in the Calvados department in northwestern France. It is located on the southern bank of the estuary of the Seine across from le Havre and very close to the exit of the Pont de Normandie. Its inhabitants are called Honfleurais.

It is especially known for its old port, characterized by its houses with slate-covered frontages, painted many times by artists, including in particular Gustave Courbet, Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet and Johan Jongkind, forming the école de Honfleur which contributed to the appearance of the Impressionist movement. The Sainte-Catherine church, which has a bell tower separate from the principal building, is the largest church made out of wood in France.


Author:

Beuzeville

Beuzeville is a commune in the north-western part of the department of Eure in the Normandy region in northern France.
Located on the Lieuvin plateau, it is adjacent to the communes of Pont-l'Évêque, Honfleur and Deauville. Beuzeville is located just off the A13 freeway close to the Pont de Normandie and the Tancarville Bridge.

Author:

Pegasus Bridge

Pegasus Bridge is a bascule bridge , that was built in 1934, that crossed the Caen Canal, between Caen and Ouistreham, in Normandy, France.

Also known as the Bénouville Bridge after the neighbouring village, it was, with the nearby Ranville Bridge over the river Orne, later renamed Horsa Bridge, a major objective of the British airborne troops during Operation Deadstick, part of Operation Tonga in the opening minutes of the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 during the Second World War. A unit of glider infantry of the 2nd Battalion, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, British 6th Airborne Division, commanded by Major John Howard, was to land, take the bridges intact and hold them until relieved. The successful taking of the bridges played an important role in limiting the effectiveness of a German counter-attack in the days and weeks following the Normandy invasion.


Author:

Juno Beach Centre

The Juno Beach Centre or, in French, Centre Juno Beach, is a museum located in Courseulles-sur-Mer in the Calvados region of Normandy, France. It is situated immediately behind the beach codenamed Juno, the section of the Allied beachhead on which 14,000 Canadian troops landed on D-Day 6 June 1944.

The Centre was conceived in the 1990s by a group of Canadian veterans who felt that the contributions and sacrifices of Canadian soldiers during the liberation of Europe were not properly commemorated and represented in the Normandy region. The project, spearheaded by veteran Garth Webb and his companion Lise Cooper, began initially as a grassroots fundraising campaign that eventually gained the financial support of many institutions and businesses and the Canadian and French governments at many levels. The Centre was inaugurated on 6 June 2003. Over one thousand Canadian veterans attended the inauguration in 2003, as well as the 2004 ceremony for the 60th anniversary of D-Day.


Author:

Bayeux

Bayeux is the home of the Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England. It is also known as the first major town secured by the Allies during Operation Overlord. Charles de Gaulle made two famous speeches in this town.

Bayeux is a sub-prefecture of Calvados. It is the seat of the arrondissement of Bayeux and of the canton of Bayeux.


Author:

Crisbecq Battery

The Crisbecq Battery was a German World War II artillery battery constructed by the Todt Organization near the French village of Saint-Marcouf in the department of Manche in the north-east of Cotentin peninsula in Normandy. It formed a part of Nazi Germany's Atlantic Wall coastal fortifications. The main armament were three Czech 21 cm Kanone 39 canons, two of which housed in heavily fortified casemates up to 10 feet thick of concrete. The battery, with a range of 27–33 kilometers , could cover the beaches between Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue and Pointe du Hoc.

The battery engaged US ships on D-Day and was evacuated by the Germans on 11 June 1944 and took no further part in the Normandy landings.


Author:

Barfleur

Barfleur is a commune in the Manche department in the Normandy region in northwestern France. It is twinned with Lyme Regis in the United Kingdom.
A Brittany Ferries vessel is named after the village and operates from nearby Cherbourg-Octeville to Poole in the United Kingdom.

Author:

Bricquebec

Bricquebec is a former commune in the Manche department in Normandy in northwestern France. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Bricquebec-en-Cotentin.
As revealed by the etymology of its name, the origin of Bricquebec is connected to the Viking colonisation of the Cotentin Peninsula at the beginning of the 10th century. Tradition attributes the foundation of the château to the Norman, Anslech. The dukes of Normandy made Bricquebec one of their strongholds.

Author:

Carentan

Carentan is a small rural town near the north-eastern base of the French Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy in north-western France near the port city of Cherbourg, with a population somewhat over 6,000. It is a former commune in the Manche department. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Carentan-les-Marais. The town was a strategic early goal of the World War II landings as capturing the town was necessary to link the lodgements at Utah and Omaha beaches which were divided by the Douve River estuary . The town was also needed as an intermediate staging position for the capture of the cities of Cherbourg and Octeville, with the critically important port facilities in Cherbourg.
Carentan is close to the sites of the medieval Battle of Formigny of the Hundred Years' War. The town is also likely the site of the historical references to the ancient gallic port as Crociatonum a possession of the Unelli tribe as it is situated on the Douve River slightly inland from the beaches at Normandy—geographically, such gentle terrain as is nearby down the river valley is excellent for boat building

Author:

Saint-Lô

Saint-Lô is a commune in north-western France, the capital of the Manche department in the region of Normandy.
Although it is the second largest city of Manche after Cherbourg, it remains the prefecture of the department. It is also chef-lieu of an arrondissement and two cantons .

Author:

Bures-les-Monts

Bures-les-Monts is a former commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region in northwestern France. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Souleuvre-en-Bocage.

Author:

Saint-Denis-Maisoncelles

Saint-Denis-Maisoncelles is a former commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region in northwestern France. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Souleuvre-en-Bocage.

Author:

Vire

Vire is a town and a former commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region in northwestern France. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Vire-Normandie.
In 1123, Henri I Beauclerc, King of England and Duke of Normandy, had a redoubt constructed on a rocky hill top, which was surrounded by the Vire river. The redoubt was stoned square at the bottom to assure the defense of the Duchy of Normandy against any attacks from Brittany or Maine.

Author:

La Mère Poulard

La Mère Poulard is famous for its omelette. The story is that pilgrims were always too hungy to wait for a big meal. Therefore she prepared omelette. The "secret" recepy of La Mère Poulars was the beating of the egg yolk and egg white seperately and mixing it later on.

Author:

Le Mont-Saint-Michel

The island of Mont-Saint-Michel is built from blocks of granite or granulite. Le Mont-Saint-Michel was previously connected to the mainland via a thin natural land bridge, which before modernization was covered at high tide and revealed at low tide.

Before the construction of the first monastic establishment in the 8th century, the island was called "monte tombe". According to legend, St. Michael the Archangel appeared to St. Aubert, bishop of Avranches, in 708 and instructed him to build a church on the rocky islet. Aubert repeatedly ignored the angel''s instruction, until St. Michael burned a hole in the bishop''s skull with his finger.

The island also appears on the Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates the 1066 Norman conquest of England.

The Mont-Saint-Michel and its bay were added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1979.

Cap Fréhel

Cap Fréhel is a peninsula in Côtes-d'Armor, in northern Brittany, France which extends off the Côte d'Émeraude into the Golfe de Saint-Malo. No towns or villages are situated on the peninsula; however, two lighthouses, one from the 17th century and the other one from 1950, are located at the tip of it. The Cap is located 8.5 km from the town centre of Fréhel, although, administratively, it is located within the territory of the commune of Plévenon.
The peninsula is surrounded mainly by cliffs, which make it difficult to access it via sea. The whole of the undulating terrain is covered in moorland and marshes, which make it difficult to construct any structure on the site.

Author:

Saint-Brieuc

Saint-Brieuc is named after a Welsh monk Brioc, who Christianised the region in the 6th century and established an oratory there. Bro Sant-Brieg/Pays de Saint-Brieuc, one of the nine traditional bishoprics of Brittany which were used as administrative areas before the French Revolution, was named after Saint-Brieuc. It also dates from the Middle Ages when the "pays de Saint Brieuc," or Penteur, was established by Duke Arthur II of Brittany as one of his eight "battles" or administrative regions.
The town is located by the English Channel, on the Bay of Saint-Brieuc. Two rivers flow through Saint-Brieuc: the Goued/Gouët and the Gouedig/Gouédic.

Author: