Today’s ride was 70.7 km with 333 vertical metres of climbing between Bayeux and Beuvron-en-Auge.

After being collected from our hotels we organised our bikes and rode out of Bayeux,

We headed straight for the coast, where again we hit D-Day beaches. The area is plentiful with agriculture and the contrasting colours are gorgeous – field after field of brown wheat or green corn, often peppered with red poppies, all against the blue backdrop of the ocean we are heading towards, makes for a lovely start to this day. We pedalled along the shores of Juno and Sword Beach for nearly 20km, taking our time. The Juno Memorial Centre was a good stop just before coffee and many of us took the opportunity to learn more about the Canadian war effort in particular. The rest of us took coffee just over the canal.

Turning up and along the Canal de Caen a la Mer, we headed inland along a beautifully fast bike path until we hit and crossed over Pegasus Bridge. We stopped at its museum for lunch on the grass to admire the bridge from afar and take a stroll through the museum – it is small but well worth a visit – see below. 

John Howard – by Ken Nairn

John Howard had proved himself a veritable alchemist when it came to training, knocking base metal into something approaching gold. 

A thirty-two-year-old Oxfordshire policeman with a deep sense of purpose, Howard had the rugged features of an outdoorsman – one whose tough working-class childhood had left him with deep resources and a powerful sense of self-belief. 

Over the course of several months, he had pushed his men through a training programme unlike any other, with a relentless focus on physical fitness. He forced them to swim glacial rivers (naked, and in midwinter), trudge thirty miles through bog land and slither across firing ranges on which live-bullet exercises were underway. 

His programme might have dropped straight from the sports curriculum of one of Britain’s more draconian boarding schools. Edwards and his friends had grown used to being ‘roughly roused’6 from their beds in the shivering chill of midwinter and transported to the ice-bound wilderness of Salisbury Plain. They would then have to find their way back to camp without being captured by the patrols sent to hunt them down. It was a gruelling regime.

For the first few months, the men were half-broken by hardship. One of Denis Edwards’s comrades, Wally Parr, had almost collapsed from exhaustion and there were times when he ‘wanted to chuck it in’, especially in midwinter. ‘Your feet are raw and you’ve got blisters and blood everywhere and your back’s aching and you’re spending night after night on Salisbury Plain, sleeping on the frozen ground in the freezing fog.’ 

One thing alone kept them going and that was their absolute devotion to their commander. They cursed him for being ‘the hardest of task-masters and they hated him when he wrenched them from their early morning slumbers. But they knew he was a consummate professional, one whose mantra was blunt and uncompromising: ‘Win at everything.’

Pegasus Bridge Museum
The trip plan says of the Pegasus Bridge Museum; A small museum but a fantastic one. A short very informative film starts you off, explaining the importance the capture of this bridge had in the war, as well as the incredible feats of bravery and expertise needed for it to happen from the gliders and paratroopers, after whom the bridge is named. The museum is packed full of artifacts from the time and in a garden out the back there are models of the gliders, tanks, as well as the original bridge itself.

This afternoon I rode with Cree, Ruth and Sarah and enjoyed a gently paced, lovely afternoon riding, with a fittingly pretty route coming into one of France´s most beautiful villages, Beuvron-en-Auge.

Considered among “Les Plus Beaux Villages de France”, The buildings start several villages back with the timber walled style of the 16th century. Beuvron-en-Auge gives you the impact in full force and it is a sight to behold.
We were spread out among a number of lovely village hotels and reconvened for a relaxed dinner in town.