D-Day Gold Beach, Arromanches - Small group from Caen abard a Van

After meeting With your driver-guide "Régis" you will travel to the Normandy beaches aboard an air-conditioned minivan. 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, 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.

The British Normandy Memorial stands just outside the village of Ver-sur-Mer overlooking Gold Beach, one of the two beaches where British forces landed on 6 June 1944 (D-Day). It records the names of all those under British command who lost their lives in Normandy between 6 June and 31 August 1944. On the columns of the memorial are the names of more than 22,000 men and women. The majority of these names are those of the British soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who lost their lives on D-Day and in the weeks that followed.

The Longues-sur-Mer battery was a World War II German artillery battery constructed near the French village of Longues-sur-Mer in Normandy. The battery was sited on a 60 m (200 ft) cliff overlooking the sea and formed a part of Germany's Atlantic Wall coastal fortifications. It was located between the Allied landing beaches of Gold and Omaha and shelled both beaches on D-Day (6 June 1944). The battery was captured on June 7 and played no further part in the Normandy campaign. The battery is the only one in Normandy to retain all its original guns in situ and was listed an historical monument in October 2001. It remains in a good state of conservation.

Arromanches is remembered as a historic place of the Normandy landings and in particular as the place where a Mulberry harbour artificial port was installed. This artificial port allowed the disembarkation of 9,000 tons of material per day. It was on the beach of Arromanches that, during the Invasion of Normandy immediately after D-Day, the Allies established an artificial temporary harbour to allow the unloading of heavy equipment without waiting for the conquest of deep water ports such as Le Havre or Cherbourg.The port was commissioned on 14 June 1944. The British built huge floating concrete caissons which, after being towed from England, then had to be assembled to form walls and piers forming and defining the artificial port called the Mulberry harbour. These comprised pontoons linked to the land by floating roadways. Today sections of the Mulberry harbour still remain with huge concrete blocks sitting on the sand and more can be seen further out at sea.