D-Day Artificial Breakwater

D-Day Landing Craft

D-Day Sherman Tanks

La Rade de Cherbourg

La Vierge

Le Léopold

Normandy is rich, dairy-led cuisine: oysters and mussels from the Channel, sole normande, andouille sausage, creamy camembert and pont-l’évêque cheeses, and apple-based dishes with cider and calvados. The coast adds scallops and lobster in season. The orchards supply tarte normande and apple tarts, and the pastures give the finest cream and butter. It is comfort food built around the cold northern sea and the orchard countryside.

Hôtel La Fontaine

Hôtel du Casino

Hôtel Le Relais du Silence

Hôtel L’Essor

Hôtel Les Fuchsias

Normandy’s coast is the solemn, history-soaked diving frontier of the English Channel, where the waters off the D-Day landing beaches hold one of the world’s great concentrations of wartime wrecks. Off Omaha, Utah, Sword, Juno and Gold beaches lie destroyers like the USS O’Brien and HMCS Trentonian, the SS Empire Broadsword, scattered landing craft, Sherman tanks and the remains of the artificial Mulberry harbours, all in 5-40 m of cold, green water. Cherbourg’s roads add the Belgian freighter Léopold and a scatter of small wrecks, while the wild Cotentin and the granite Écréhous reefs hold lobsters, conger and seals. This is advanced, often drýsuit diving in strong tidal currents, but it rewards the well-prepared with moving history and surprising biodiversity. Normandy is a pilgrimage site for wreck divers and a counterpoint to the warm Mediterranean south.

Normandy – D-Day Wrecks & Channel