Biking Normandy: The Invasion Beaches

By Steve Wartenberg

Biking Normandy: The Invasion Beaches, The Best Book Ever About Cycling Normandy. The Steve Says Cycling Series version 1.0. Come take a bike ride through the history of D-Day: the Omaha and Utah invasion beaches, the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, the British port at Arromanches, the American Cemetery, the apple orchards, hedgerows and little towns of this rural region. This book contains several day trip routes from Bayeux, as well as a circular route through Normandy. As an added bonus, Biking Normandy includes the stories and recollections of several of the Army Rangers who landed here on June 6, 1944 (from their 1999 reunion trip that I covered for the newspaper I worked for at the time).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Says Publishing
• Release date: Feb 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9780985190262

Book preview

Biking Normandy: The Invasion Beaches

Biking Normandy: The Invasion Beaches

The Steve Says Cycling Series

Version 1.0

Copyright © 2017

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-9851902-6-2

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Basics

Chapter 2 Day Trip to the American Cemetery (25 miles)

Chapter 3 Day Trip to the Arromanches (20 to 25 miles)

Chapter 4 The Rangers

Chapter 5 Day Trip, Carentan to Bayeux (40 miles), including Pointe du Hoc

Chapter 6 The Carentan & St. Mere-Eglise Loop (35 miles)

Chapter 7 Along the Coast: From East to West

About the Author

Introduction

I’ve been to the Normandy region of France four times. Three times on a bike, and once – in 1999 – by bus & car to write a series of stories (I was a newspaper reporter at the time). I’ve pedaled all along this historic and rural coast: The invasion beaches, the port the British built while under fire, the cemeteries, the memorials and bombed-out bunkers. Past the cliffs and beaches where thousands of GIs landed – and died, and through the villages, apple orchards, herds of cows and endless rows of hedgerows.

I’ll get to all the cycling soon (I promise!), but I’m going to start Biking Normandy: The Invasion Beaches with my 1999 visit because, well, this was the trip where I learned why these beaches, cliffs, cemeteries and memorials are truly sacred grounds.

Back in 1999 (wow, that’s so long ago), I was a reporter with the Bucks County Intelligencer newspaper, a medium-sized paper in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The movie Saving Private Ryan came out the year before (1998), and I went to see it with Sid Salomon

, who was there on June 6, 1944. Sid was a first lieutenant in C Company of the Army Ranger 2nd Battalion. I wrote a column about seeing the movie with a real-life Ranger.

BTW: The Tom Hanks character in Saving Private Ryan, Tom Miller, is captain of C Company of the Army Ranger 2nd Battalion. Yep, Sid’s company.

I saw (Hanks) on TV, Sid told me back in 1998. "He made the comment, he said