Page 10 - Shining On Newsletter - Autumn 2022

Day three, inland battle sites Deadmans Corner, Sainte-Mère-Église and the Normandy Victory
museum

We decided to exclude a few planned places on today’s schedule as it had become apparent that you
needed the whole day for some of the places we had visited to take in all the information provided. Next
time we’ll allow a full week! Today our main focus was therefore going to be the anticipated highlight of
the tour: Sainte-Mere-Eglise.
We took the scenic route pausing at the Normandy Victory museum near Carentan, another place worth
a visit. This is an ideal place to stop for lunch and take in a very interesting museum. It has some old
barracks huts, a scatter of WW2 vehicles including the inevitable tank and jeeps, and a couple of cafes,
one being 40’s American themed.

By the time we’d had a coffee and chatted there was not enough time to go inside the museum building
proper, but it is a must for another time.
We did have a minor incident on the way there, we had a man down: Martin. Basically gravel and an
adverse camber on a steep uphill right turn were the causes of a zero mph drop, and after a good check
over we found only minor damage to the bike and a bruised shoulder, which Martin, like a true hardened
biker, shrugged off.
We headed straight to Sainte-Mere-Eglise, and it didn’t disappoint. What a museum they have there. You
could spend at least a day here taking in all the interactive content via the Tablet provided. Just a flavour
of what you can experience is a simulation of what it was like to ride in then jump out of a Douglas C47,
known as the Gooney Bird. An interactive map pinpoints where each trooper landed by parachute in the

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