Private Tour WW2 D-Day British in Normandy (PRIVATE TOUR)

As you booked a Private tour, the driver guide will pick you up around 06:15 am at your hotel location in Paris.

You will travel aboard a comfortable and air-conditioning minivan (7 passengers max).

Expected time for being pickup at your hotel: From 06 :00 am till 06 :30 am

Due to new traffic rules in Paris which ban on the majority of vehicular traffic crossing the city center in 2022, Hotel Pick-up and Drop-off would be operated only in the following listed Paris districts: 75008, 75007, 75006, 75005, 75016, 75015 and 75014.

If your are staying in others Paris districts (instead of the listed ones above), the meeting point for the tour (pick-up and drop-off) will be done in front of the following adress:

LIDO DE PARIS 116 Av. des Champs-Élysées, 75008 Paris Enclosed a map of the new project regarding cars traffic in Paris for 2022.

Dowload the map here  

This journey of one day in Lower Normandy will embarks you in the footsteps of the brave allied soldiers who fought for our liberty so far away from their homelands. Operation Neptune was the codename of the largest military' seaborne and airborne invasion for D-day ever organized.

Logistics, infrastructures, air forces supremacy were the keys success and enabled the allies to win the battle of Normandy. During that day, you will discover not only one of the most important episodes in modern history (so well related in the movies « Saving Private Ryan » and «The Longuest Day») but also beautiful countrysides (known as « le bocage ») in one of the historical' oldest and greatest region of France.

With your driver-guide you will travel to the Normandy beaches in an air-conditioned minivan. Once you arrive in the Calvados county in Normandy, you will stop at “Pegasus Bridge”.

Pegasus Bridge is a bascule bridge, that was built in 1934, that crossed the Caen Canal, between Caen and Ouistreham, in Normandy, France.

Also known as the Bénouville Bridge after the neighbouring village, it was, with the nearby Ranville Bridge over the river Orne, a major objective of the British airborne troops during Operation Deadstick, part of Operation Tonga in the opening minutes of the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 during the Second World War.

A unit of glider infantry of the 2nd Battalion, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, British 6th Airborne Division, commanded by Major John Howard, was to land, take the bridges intact and hold them until relieved.

The successful taking of the bridges played an important role in limiting the effectiveness of a German counter-attack in the days and weeks following the Normandy invasion.

Inaugurated on June 4th 2000 by HRH the Prince of Wales. The Memorial Pegasus is dedicated to the men of 6th Airborne Division and their role during the Battle of Normandy from June to September 1944. The museum was designed and constructed within a few months by the D-Day Landing Committee presided by Admiral Brac de la Perrière.

Guided visits, within a thematically laid out exhibition hall, enable the visitors to discover the missions of the division. Missions carried out before the seaborne landings on the beaches in June 1944, The Longest Day.

Hundreds of historical objects and photos of the era are presented in the museum.

The original Bénouville Bridge, renamed Pegasus Bridge after the liberation, is on display in the park of the museum along with a Bailey Bridge and a full size copy of a wartime Horsa glider.

The Kieffer Monument is in tribute to the commandos who landed on June 6th 1944 and was opened on June 6th 1984 by Francois Mitterrand the French President and Andre LEDTAN Mayor of Ouistreham.

The memorial "La Flamme" is large metal flame housed on top of a German bunker. The pathway leading to the memorial is lined with stones with the names of the French commando's who were killed on June 6th, 1944.

There is also a statue of Brigadier Lord Lovat who ordered his personal piper Bill Millin to play Highland Laddie as he led British Commandos ashore on D-Day as portrayed in the film The Longest Day.

The British Normandy Memorial stands just outside the village of Ver-sur-Mer overlooking Gold Beach, one of the two beaches where British forces landed on 6 June 1944 (D-Day). It records the names of all those under British command who lost their lives in Normandy between 6 June and 31 August 1944.

On the columns of the memorial are the names of more than 22,000 men and women. The majority of these names are those of the British soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who lost their lives on D-Day and in the weeks that followed.

The Longues-sur-Mer battery was a World War II German artillery battery constructed near the French village of Longues-sur-Mer in Normandy. The battery was sited on a 60 m (200 ft) cliff overlooking the sea and formed a part of Germany's Atlantic Wall coastal fortifications.

It was located between the Allied landing beaches of Gold and Omaha and shelled both beaches on D-Day (6 June 1944). The battery was captured on June 7 and played no further part in the Normandy campaign.

The battery is the only one in Normandy to retain all its original guns in situ and was listed an historical monument in October 2001. It remains in a good state of conservation.

There, we will take a break for lunch in a local restaurant or you will      just decides by yourself of your own choices of meals (own expense).

Arromanches is remembered as a historic place of the Normandy landings and in particular as the place where a Mulberry harbour artificial port was installed. This artificial port allowed the disembarkation of 9,000 tons of material per day.

It was on the beach of Arromanches that, during the Invasion of Normandy immediately after D-Day, the Allies established an artificial temporary harbour to allow the unloading of heavy equipment without waiting for the conquest of deep water ports such as Le Havre or Cherbourg.The port was commissioned on 14 June 1944.

The British built huge floating concrete caissons which, after being towed from England, then had to be assembled to form walls and piers forming and defining the artificial port called the Mulberry harbour. These comprised pontoons linked to the land by floating roadways.

Today sections of the Mulberry harbour still remain with huge concrete blocks sitting on the sand and more can be seen further out at sea.

During the return drive to Paris you will have time to relax aboard the minivan before to be dropped off at your hotel location in the evening (between 08:00 pm till 09:00 pm).