Day 3. March 27, 2025. Ouistreham to Caen. 15 kms

Pegasus Bridge (On the left is the first house liberated in France)

Why Ouistreham? Medieval pilgrims heading for Le-Mont-Saint-Michel would have crossed the Channel and landed at  the medieval port of Barfleur. Pilgrims today would probably land at Cherbourg as Barfleur is no longer a port,, but I chose to walk via Caen because we lived for a year at the little village of Ouistreham. In a sense, I would be following the tradition of walking from home, a former home.

Sword Beach, the first of the landing beaches, begins at Ouistreham. Today, the Brittany Ferries port is here, at the mouth of the canal which takes freighters up to the port of Caen. For someone who prefers level ground, this was the easiest of walks, along the canal from Ouistreham to Caen.

Across the canal I noticed the balls of mistletoe in the trees that lined the opposite bank. Anyone wishing to steal a kiss from a friend would not have to wait until Christmas, but could simply suggest a stroll along the canal.

Mistletoe in the trees along the canal from Ouistreham to Caen

Soon I arrived at the bridge across the canal at Bénouville, better known as Pegasus Bridge. It was here on the night of June 5, 1944, that Major John Howard captured the bridge with a company of British paratroopers to prevent German reinforcements from crossing the canal to reach the landing beaches. Gone, however is the restaurant, la Peniche, formerly on a barge just before the bridge. Forty years ago on June 6 we were at the restaurant when we encountered the former British and German commanders eating at an adjacent table, their practice every anniversary. There’s a moral here, or several.

When the original bridge was failing, public pressure forced the engineers to build a replica, rather than a sleek replacement. The old bridge lies in the grounds of the nearby museum. Pegasus Bridge is a bridge with little artistic merit but a lot of history

I walked on to Caen. What a bustle of activity! In the distance a couple of ships were loading. In the foreground, a school of kayakers energetically circled their instructor. Further off another line of kids were learning to sail in tiny little boats. Fishermen were casting their lines without any evident success. 

Caen is the city of William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, who invaded England in 1066 and shot King Harold in the eye with an arrow. We have William to thank for 10,000 French words which found a home in our English language. After the Norman conquest, French was the official language of England for almost 300 years, and was spoken by the nobility. The ordinary people, however, continued to speak Anglo-Saxon or old English. The Normans may have conquered the people, but the English language prevailed. A curious linguistic relic of that time is our different vocabulary for animals on the hoof and their meat on the plate. French words survive for the meat (beef, veal, pork), for it was eaten by the French nobility, and Saxon words (cow, calf, pig) for the animals, for the peasants looked after them. Words are history.