The campsite opens onto the Omaha sector: five kilometres separate your cottage from the beach of 6 June 1944.
Port-en-Bessin marks the meeting point of the American and British sectors: Omaha Beach begins five kilometres to the west, Gold Beach four kilometres to the east. In a single day, you can take in the American Cemetery at Colleville, the Longues-sur-Mer batteries, the artificial harbour at Arromanches and the Pointe du Hoc, all less than twenty-five minutes from Camping Portland.
The D514 runs along the whole coast: it links the five D-Day beaches without ever leaving the sea.
Two days is not too many: one for the American sector, just west of the campsite, and one for the British and Canadian sectors, towards Arromanches and Courseulles.
Museums should be booked online during the school holidays. Around 6 June the coast roads and car parks are saturated: allow plenty of time, or set off early in the morning.
West of Port-en-Bessin, Omaha Beach unrolls eight kilometres of sand from Colleville to Vierville. On 6 June 1944, this is where the Americans suffered the heaviest losses of the day. The sculpture Les Braves now stands on the shore at Saint-Laurent; people swim here as anywhere else, with history simply underfoot.
Half an hour east of the campsite, the beach where fourteen thousand Canadians landed. The Juno Beach Centre tells their story, from their departure from Halifax to the liberation of Normandy. The visit continues on the beach, where bunkers and a Cross of Lorraine remain, and then in the oyster port.
A quarter of an hour's drive to one of the biggest construction projects of the war: in a few days, the Allies assembled offshore a harbour the size of Dover's. The Phoenix caissons still break the surface of the bay. Breathtaking view from the cliff, east of the town.
Four casemates set on the cliff between Omaha and Gold, and above all the only original guns still in place anywhere along the coast. The site is free to visit, out in the wind with the sea below: it is often the children's favourite stop.
Nine thousand three hundred and eighty-seven crosses and Stars of David lined up facing the sea, above the deadliest beach of 6 June. The American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer is free to visit; its visitor centre retraces the lives of those who rest there.
A thirty-metre cliff scaled by rope ladder by Colonel Rudder's Rangers on the morning of 6 June. The plateau, pitted with bomb craters and gutted blockhouses, has been left as it was in 1944. Twenty minutes' drive from the campsite, and a landscape you won't forget.
Photo credits: Myrabella, BienheureuxAnonyme, Dr Wilson, Florian Pépellin, Jebulon, Gzen92, Kev22, Dobroš, Zairon, Dr Bob Hall / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA / CC0).
Photo: Kev22 · CC BY-SA 4.0On the night of 5 to 6 June, at 0.16 am, three gliders landed fifty metres from the Bénouville bridge: the first operation of D-Day began there, even before the ships arrived. The original bridge is now on display at the memorial, next to the Café Gondrée, the first house in France to be liberated. About fifty minutes' drive from the campsite: combine it with Caen and its Memorial.
5-star cottages and a 2,020 m² heated water park, in Port-en-Bessin facing the Channel.
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