getting to Omaha Beach from London
 

I am going to be in London for a week next year and really want to go over to tour the Omaha beach area. Has anyone travelled from London to that area? What is the best form of transportation and how many days would we need? renting a car is an option we are ok with. Thanks for the help.

A week in London and you want to go to the Normandy Region in France? Kind of nutty. France is not going anywhere; go to Normandy when you can do it right and not shortchange everybody in the process....#o

You can't really do this is less than two days. It's not really practical to hire a car in Britain and take it to France (huge surcharges levied), so you need to do one of the following:

- Overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Caen, hire a car there, then overnight back

- Eurostar to Calais-Frethun, then hire a car there. JUST possible in a very, very long day if there's an 0530 train that stops at Calais and a 2000 coming back that stops at Calais.

- Fly, then hire a car. Even in 2008, there were very few flights from the London area to Normandy, and it's likely those few will be cut back next summer.
Check the list of airports at http://visitnormandy.org/Normandy.ns...ting-There.htm.
Then google each airport site to check operators, then operators. If no Norman airport has flights next year, Paris is the nearest airport, and London City is the closest airport to central London - but a train to Calais is likely to be quicker.

- See if someone will do a package. Try http://users.breathe.com/martin.reeve/

Normandy is due west of Paris, so you might want to calculate travel times using that as your base. If you take a train to Caen or Bayeux, you can hire a driver/guide for a day for 80€ per carload.

If I were doing this, I'd ride the last Eurostar to Paris and drive to Normandy for the night. Spend all day there, returning to Paris in time to catch the last Eurostar to London. This would minimize wasting prime sightseeing time en route.

thanks for the info. We have both been to london and paris before. I was hoping to fit this side trip in since we have never gotten it in before and I am worried we never will!

From what I've read, taking a guided tour rather than renting a car and seeing the beaches on one's own is the best way to go. And an all-day tour is better than an afternoon tour.

Battlebus tours (www.battlebus.fr) is based in Bayeux, only does all-day tours, and requires that people who book with them spend the night before the tour in the immediate area. So that using them would rule out the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Caen.

Overlord Tour (www.overlordtour.com) is based in Bayeux and does half-day tours as well as all-day tours so the ferry would work with them. It would also work if you took the afternoon tour through the War Memorial Museum in Caen. (See www.memorial-caen.fr.) In either case you could take the overnight ferry back to Portsmouth that evening.

If you want an all-day tour, I recommend taking the Eurostar to Paris and an evening train from Paris to Bayeux. Spend the night in Bayeux. Take an all-day tour (Battlebus, Overlord, or one of the others). Take the train to Caen and then the overnight ferry from Caen to Portsmouth.

The canned tour operators take you WHERE they want to go WHEN they want to. Hiring a driver puts you in control. If you want to stay longer (or shorter) in a particular spot, that's what you get.

Not to mention the fact that the tour operators charge per HEAD and guides charge by the CARLOAD.

Robespierre,

Since you favor hiring a private driver/guide, whom would you recommend?

I never thought to write down their names. But I'm sure that anyone referred by bayeux-tourism.com/eng knows his/her stuff.