A cathedral you can see from ten kilometres away, medieval lanes along the River Aure and the largest British war cemetery in France: Bayeux is fifteen minutes from your cottage.
Camping Portland, a five-star Yelloh! Village, is in Port-en-Bessin, eleven kilometres from Bayeux: you sleep facing the Channel and reach the cathedral in fifteen minutes. Bayeux came through the centuries without a scratch: liberated intact on 7 June 1944, the first town freed in France, it kept its cathedral quarter, half-timbered houses and mills on the Aure. People come for the Tapestry, back in 2027 in a renovated museum, and stay for the rest: the cathedral and its crypt, the big Saturday market, the café terraces of rue Saint-Jean.
A direct road through Escures and Vaucelles: no main roads to take, and you're in town in a quarter of an hour.
The whole historic centre can be walked in ten minutes: park once, then go on foot.
The Tapestry museum is closed for renovation until 2027 and the work itself is on show in London while the building work lasts. The Battle of Normandy museum and the Baron Gérard museum remain open.
Seventy metres of 11th-century embroidery telling the story of William's conquest of England: the oldest comic strip in the world, inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. The museum is undergoing works until 2027 and the work itself is travelling to London during the project; it will return to Bayeux in a completely renovated setting.
Consecrated in 1077 in the presence of William the Conqueror, it combines a Romanesque nave with a Gothic choir of rare delicacy. Its two spires can be picked out from the sea. Entry is free; in summer the town dresses it in projections after nightfall.
Walled up and then forgotten for centuries, rediscovered in 1412 during building works: the 11th-century crypt has kept its columns with carved capitals and its frescoed musician angels. You go down a few steps, into silence, beneath the choir of the cathedral.
The river runs through the old town, past the mill and the old wash houses, and under the half-timbered houses. A one-kilometre loop, the prettiest walk in Bayeux, to do before or after the cathedral: it's where the best photos of the town are taken.
The largest Second World War British cemetery in France: four thousand six hundred and forty-eight Commonwealth graves, and opposite them the memorial to the one thousand eight hundred and eight missing. Planted like an English garden, it is free to visit, a step from the Battle of Normandy museum.
Housed in the former bishops' palace, the MAHB unfolds eight centuries of objects: Bayeux porcelain and lace, Italian primitives, Norman paintings. The courtroom and the garden of the old palace are worth the visit on their own.
Photo credits: ChBougui, Zairon, MagicRubberDuck, Iain Cameron, Roi.dagobert, M. Strīķis / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY / CC BY-SA) · Bayeux Tapestry, public domain.
Photo: Roi.dagobert · CC BY-SA 3.0Planted around 1862, this weeping beech spreads its branches over a circumference of nearly forty metres; its boughs sweep down to the ground and form a leafy hut that children dive into. The English-style botanical garden around it is free to visit, five minutes' walk from the centre: the ideal stop with children after the cathedral.
Camping Portland is a five-star Yelloh! Village on the heights of Port-en-Bessin, the closest fishing port to Bayeux. The indoor water park is heated to 30 °C from the first to the last day of the season, with its 48 m slide, and the premium pitches have their own heated private washrooms.
Our guests rate us 9.4/10 and the Yelloh! Village network ranks us in its Top 5. Cottages sleep 4 to 8 people, including one cottage adapted for guests with reduced mobility.
5-star cottages and a 2,020 m² heated water park, in Port-en-Bessin facing the Channel.
Check availability