Cherbourg plays Nancy

Bonjour,

You know the days are getting shorter and the sun is moving south when your shadow at midday looks like this.

I know many (well one or two) have asked what sport is popular in Cherbourg. Rugby? Soccer? Tennis? Nope – handball. It’s a big deal here, with the local team playing in the National League. They are coming 9th in the competition and last Friday we went to see them lose against Nancy (who are coming 5th). The game looks like a cross between basketball and water polo played on land. The scores were pretty close so everybody was a bit excited (i.e. LOUD). Every seat was given a complimentary piece of cardboard that we worked out was to be folded up (concertina wise) to slap against whatever you can find. The serious fans bought their own banging equipment and weren’t afraid to use it.

Similar to what we saw during the World Cup, everybody was happy, well behaved and lots of families were there. What was noticeable was the lack of marketing, merchandising, eating/drinking outlets and any other opportunity to try and take your money. We don’t know how the club funds itself but obviously not from the €8 tickets (and that was the good seats).

And then, for a complete change of pace, we went for a drive to Utah Beach on Sunday. I wrote about my visit to Omaha Beach back in April but Utah Beach was one of the other D Day beaches. This was considered a pretty successful invasion – under 600 men killed, wounded or unaccounted for, compared with over 4000 at Omaha. This was mainly due to the geography and luck.

On the left near the flag is the location of what was a German gun battery which was bombed by the Allies a couple of weeks before D Day. If this was still in use during the invasion on the beach then the result would have been very different

Just near the beach is the village of Sainte Marie du Mont, that had the distinction of the being the first Normandy village liberated on 6 June 1944. We still find it hard to get our heads around the relatively recent and horrible history of these pretty little villages that have been peacefully and quietly going about their business for centuries before WW2.

Reflection because this was on display behind a shop window, but guessing it was taken on D Day just after liberating the village.

Same spot as above. I asked Lee if he wanted to get in the photo: “no”, but we didn’t realise that he was in the reflection in the first pic. #gotcha

Sign says: “An American paratrooper hid in the recess behind this pump. Broad-shouldered but lean, he was clearly older than his comrades, his face lined with wrinkles, his eyes pale and expressionless. His legs bent like a horseman’s. *(who writes this stuff??)* He held his rifle in the crook of his elbow, like a hunter. Lying in wait behind this pump, he fired at the panic-sticken German soldiers. He is said to have killed ten of them, two of which were at least 60 yards away on the road.

It’s hard to go anywhere without driving past one of these markers. They are placed about every kilometre along Liberty Road (La voie de la Liberté), a route from Utah Beach to Belgium (1146 kms) to commemorate the route followed by the Americans.