The D-Day coast with a guide, and Mont-Saint-Michel after everyone leaves
Bayeux, Longues-sur-Mer, Cricqueville-en-Bessin, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, Colleville-sur-Mer, Arromanches-les-Bains, Pontorson, Le Mont-Saint-Michel
8 stops · 8:30 am – 9:30 pm · kept in September 202514 playbooks shared · added to 36 trips
- 8:30 am1Guide pick-up outside the Bayeux tourist officeBayeux
Take the guided day rather than driving it yourself. Sixty kilometres of near-empty coast, and without someone telling you where the seawall stood, Omaha is a car park and a beach. Shared full-day tours out of Bayeux run about €130 a head and book out weeks ahead in summer. One planning note: the Bayeux Tapestry museum is closed for its rebuild until 2027, so do not build the morning around it. Verified 2026-09-06: the Bayeux Tapestry has been closed to the public since 1 September 2025 for a €38m rebuild, with the new museum due to open in October 2027 — so it is out for the whole of 2026 and the warning here is correct.
13 min by train or taxi · 8.0 km - 9:10 am2Longues-sur-Mer, the only battery with its guns still in itLongues-sur-Mer
Free, always open, and unlike every other German position on this coast the 150 mm guns are still in their casemates. Walk past the four bunkers to the observation post at the cliff edge — that is the shot from The Longest Day, and standing in it explains the geometry of the whole landing better than any museum on the coast.
22 min by train or taxi · 22 km - 10:30 am3Pointe du HocCricqueville-en-Bessin
The ground here has never been levelled: those craters are the naval bombardment, left exactly as it finished. Free, and the car park fills by 11:00 in season. Keep going past the monument to the cliff observation post — most people photograph the first crater and turn round.
16 min by train or taxi · 9.7 km - 12 pm4Lunch on the beach road above OmahaSaint-Laurent-sur-Mer
One of very few places actually on the beach road open at lunch outside July and August. Plain food, seventy minutes, and you eat looking at the sand — which is the reason to stop here rather than drive fifteen minutes back into Bayeux and lose the thread of the morning.
14 min walk · 1.1 km - 1:30 pm5The American cemetery, then down to the beachColleville-sur-Mer
Free, but bring photo ID for the gate. Visitor centre first, then the graves, then take the path down to the sand and walk back up — coming up off the beach towards the bluff is the only way the ground makes sense, and nobody who arrives by coach does it. Closing is 18:00 in summer and 17:00 from mid-September; the flag lowering is at the end of the day, not the middle. Verified 2026-09-06: open every day of the year except 25 December and 1 January, and last admission to both the cemetery and the visitor centre is 16:30. A 13:30 start is enough; anyone arriving after 16:30 is turned away at the gate.
17 min by train or taxi · 17 km - 3:45 pm6Arromanches and what is left of the MulberryArromanches-les-Bains
The concrete caissons out in the bay are the artificial harbour, and the visit is governed by the tide table rather than opening hours — at low water you can walk out among them. The 360° cinema on the cliff above is twenty minutes and earns its keep only if the weather has closed in.
47 min by train or taxi · 103 km - 5 pm7South to the bay while the light goesPontorson
About 1h45. Everything parks at the mainland lot — there is no other option and it is charged per day, not per hour. From there the free navette shuttle drops you 200 m short of the gate, or you walk the causeway in 35 minutes, which at this hour is the better half of the journey: the Mount grows for the whole walk.
8 min by train or taxi · 2.6 km - 7 pm8The Mount once the day-trippers have goneLe Mont-Saint-Michel
The abbey closes at 19:00 in summer and 18:00 out of season, and that is exactly why you arrive now. The Grande Rue empties, the ramparts stay open and free all night, and on a big tidal coefficient the water comes in fast enough to watch it move across the sand. Eat inside the walls at the Mère Poulard brasserie, or better, at Le Pré Salé in Beauvoir on the way in — lamb raised on the salt marsh you have just driven across. Verified 2026-09-06: the abbey is open 09:00–19:00 from May to August and 09:30–18:00 from September to April, last admission one hour before closing. Mid-September already counts as low season, so the abbey's last admission is 17:00 and it is shut before this stop begins — which is the point of arriving now. The ramparts and the Grande Rue stay open and free.