Normandy’s story is not only written on its beaches. A short drive from the D-Day landing sites, you will find a region of half-timbered harbour towns, orchards that have been making apple brandy for centuries, and one of the most extraordinary abbeys in the world rising straight out of the sea. If you are spending more than a day or two in the area, these are the places that round out the picture of Normandy.
Honfleur, the painter’s harbour
With its tall, narrow houses reflected in the water of the Vieux Bassin, Honfleur has been drawing artists for well over a century, Eugène Boudin and the early Impressionists among them. It survived the war largely untouched, which means a stroll through its cobbled streets and along the harbour feels like stepping into one of their paintings. It is also simply a wonderful place to sit at a café terrace with a coffee or a plate of fresh seafood.
Calvados country
The pastures inland from the coast are Calvados apple brandy country, and a visit to a local producer is a chance to taste a tradition that long predates 1944. Tours typically include a walk through the orchards, an explanation of how the apples are pressed and distilled, and of course a tasting, a warming, distinctly Norman way to end a day of history and fresh sea air.
Mont-Saint-Michel
A little further afield, at the border between Normandy and Brittany, Mont-Saint-Michel rises from the sand and tidal flats like something out of a fairy tale. The abbey at its summit has drawn pilgrims for over a thousand years, and the walk up through the narrow medieval streets to the ramparts and cloister rewards you with some of the finest views in France. Tides here move famously fast, one more reason it is worth visiting with someone who knows the causeway and the crowds.
One region, many stories
Pairing a D-Day beaches tour with an afternoon in Honfleur, a Calvados tasting, or a day trip to Mont-Saint-Michel gives you a fuller sense of Normandy, not only as the setting for one of the most significant days of the twentieth century, but as a region with its own deep history, landscape and way of life that stretches far beyond June 1944.