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Normandy region, France (5 - 6 February 2011)

Who grew up watching Charlie Brown cartoons? If not, you missed out! One Peanuts movie I last saw probably 20 years ago was Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (And Don't Come Back!), in which a few of the gang visited France on a student exchange program. I got the random urge to download and watch it a few weeks back since I'm in France myself and was in the mood for some cartoons hehe (and who isn't from time to time ;) After several “Oh my God, I remember this bit!” outbursts, I did a little digging and found out the places they visited and stayed are actually real places, all of them in the Normandy region which covers the very northwest of France. Skip forward a week or two and I was thinking of something to do for Waitangi Day. I could find nothing happening in Paris related to it, and so discussed with Kristina the idea of a daytrip out to Normandy somewhere - semi-relevant to New Zealand given the World War II landings at Omaha Beach in 1944. That daytrip idea evolved into a weekend road trip, taking in Charlie Brown's destinations, Omaha Beach (also a Charlie Brown destination in a subsequent episode following on from the movie), and staying in Normandy's capital city of Rouen. Boya!

Couple screenshots from Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown. They landed in London, spent half a day there (in which Snoopy played tennis at Wimbledon and got kicked out hehe), got a train to Dover and took a hovercraft across the English Channel to France because there was no such thing as the Eurostar back in those days. From Calais they hired an old heap of French shit and headed to their accommodations, one of which was in Morville-sur-Andelle.

And this is it, and there ain't much to it hehe - just a tiny village of 250. We passed an old lady standing at her gate on the roadside waving a stick or something while her wee dog was taking a piss, we passed a tractor (twice), and that's about it. Awesome :)

Another spot that was mentioned in Charlie Brown was Le Héron, also a tiny village of 250, and also with little happening. Awesome :)

So why did these insignificant podunk villages feature in a popular feature-length American cartoon? Charles M. Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, was based in this area for six weeks during World War II. He lived in a chateau plonked between Morville and Le Héron, and it was this chateau that I had really wanted to find out here. In the movie it was called Chateau Mal Voisin, and it took only a few minutes to find its real-life name: Manoir de Malvoisine (spot the similar spelling :) However, it took me a good hour of Google'ing to find its exact location - even its website didn't help, but eventually I got it. Just as depicted in Charlie Brown, it's up a long tree-lined driveway away from the road. However, what wasn't depicted was the big locked gate! I didn't come all this way only to leave again with nothing but a photo of a fucking gate, so I let myself in and drove up hahaha!

And here it is. Again, exactly as depicted right down the the wooden bridge, the river, and the tree - just awesome! :) Too bad the weather was a bit crap..

Today it's a B&B, popular with trout fishers in the summer as it sits right on the bank of the Andelle River. We only spent about ten minutes here, sneaking around as we didn't know if anybody was home or about to come home hahaha!				This was our beast for the weekend by the way - a Peugeot 207. It's even similar to the car the Peanuts gang had hehe.

I got my shots and we made a hasty departure, me with a big smile on my dial. To think that I grew up watching that cartoon, never thinking I would actually someday visit these places I was seeing. It may seem small fry to most but to me it was personally very significant.

From Le Héron we drove two hours to the Normandy coast, driving along these awesome little roads on which the Peugeot got given a good work out...		Through bare forests that were of interest to one person at least...		And through more podunk villages.

We eventually made it here. In a nutshell, this is a World War II cemetery and memorial honouring American soldiers who died in Europe during the war. Kristina put her ten cents in the guest book, and I posed beside a back-to-front New Zealand flag. The main theme of the memorial is the invasion of Normandy by Allied forces on June 6, 1944. Germany had taken over much of western Europe, including France, and the Normandy invasion was key to pushing the Germans back and to their eventual defeat. The Allies were made up of several countries including the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia.

The visitors' centre houses many exhibits of medals, weapons and various other artefacts (such as this monster of a walkie-talkie), stories and videos, and so forth. Regarding the guy in the centre shot: “Sergeant Frank Peregory received the Medal of Honor for his heroism on June 8, 1944, while moving inland from Omaha Beach. When machine gun fire halted his unit's advance, Peregory stormed through enemy positions and attacked with his rifle, bayonet and hand grenades. His daring actions cleared the way for his battalion's successful advance. He was killed in action a week later, and is buried at the Normandy American Cemetary.”

The names of 1,557 Americans who lost their lives in the conflict but could not be located and/or identified are inscribed on the walls of this garden at the far east side of the memorial.

Overlooking the cemetery. I stole the aerial shot on the right to give a better idea of the size of it - 172 acres in all. It sits on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach (the codename for one of five landing beaches of the invasion). By the way, has who has seen Saving Private Ryan?

The cemetery contains the remains of 9,387 American military dead, most of whom were killed during the invasion of Normandy and ensuing military operations. The rows of crosses (and stars for the Jewish-American soldiers) just go on and on, and these are only those who were not repatriated for permanent burial in the US as many more were. All this because of some fucker with a stupid moustache.

Overlooking Omaha Beach. The cemetery was closing for the day as we left, and two folk were taking the US flags down. At Kristina's behest I intercepted them with the car hehe, and they were nice enough (albeit seemingly reluctant) to let her have a photo with one. Her accent is unmistakeable, but I thought better of making a crack about me being German or something ;)

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Page Comments

Loved Normandy on the bike trip seen some great places. Did you go in the Museum at Omaha? did you see the section on the Brothers that died which they based Saving Private Ryan on? If you have seen this one cemetery I would also recommend for you to visit the other the German one is very strange and all made up of black head stones. - Ba'y

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