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Bayeux/MSM/Rouen itinerary questions

Posted by (Richmond, VA) on

Hello,

I am thinking of making a brief (three nights), solo trip to Normandy this July and could use some advice regarding itinerary, route, and modes of public transportation. My priorities are Bayeux (the tapestry museum above all, but I would also like a least a few hours to just wander and soak in the town), MSM, and Rouen, but I don't care in what order I see them. From what I've been reading, it seems like scheduling a late-afternoon arrival at MSM and then spending the night might be the ideal.

For this trip, I am most interested in medieval Normandy, so I don't need to include the D-Day beaches (another time!). I will be coming from Paris and will NOT have a car, and I'm thinking of heading to Alsace afterwards. I'm youngish (mid-30s) and fit, so I don't mind a hectic pace, but I don't want one so insane I can't really take things in.

Lastly, does anybody have experience with the "William the Conqueror""/Normandy in the Middle Ages" tour offered by Normandy Sightseeing Tours? http://www.normandy-sightseeing-tours.com/private-tours-france/normandy/middle-ages.html I've found good reviews of the D-Day tours, but can't find much information on the others, other than the initial deposit fee. On the one hand, a private tour for one person seems like it would be prohibitively expensive, but on the other, a tour that would get me to the sites I'm most interested in, and handle transportation, might be worth the cost.

I would be grateful for any information, thanks!

~~C

Posted by
8942 posts

That tour company, Normandy Sightseeing, gets some rather mixed reviews on Trip Advisor, though I didn't see anything at all about Medieval tours, and they don't publish their prices. That for me is a turn-off. Most of the complaints were about time management, and running bi-lingual tours.

Have you seen this company? Even their private tours are not expensive, though they also offer regular group tours. It looks like one that I would really enjoy joining.
http://www.discovery-walks.org/default.html

Posted by
1189 posts

Hi from Wisconsin,
I bet you have done your home work. Caen and William the Conqueror are all tied up together. Not much to see there after the WWII destruction, but his castle and the two abbeys.
Bayeaux has the tapestry. Now I taught about this cloth for twenty years. So seeing it was great. But my wife, a non-history person, was blown away by it. We spent 6 weeks traveling all over the place and this was one of her highlights.

A car can be rented inexpensively. I had an offer for $11/day recently in France. And the trip we leave on March 26 is $13/day.
wayne iNWI

Posted by
10344 posts

Most of the tours and visitor resources on Normandy, for Americans at least, will be focused on WW2 and not on what you're interested in, medieval Normandy.
Possibly you would enjoy designing your own tour of medieval Normandy? For this the flexibility of a rental car would be ideal.

As I'm sure you already know, Rouen and MSM are key locations for medieval Normandy. Some kings were crowned in the Rouen, and of course Joanne d'Arc was burned there.
The Bayeux tapestry has already been mentioned.

There are some battlefields that were big battles, in the many centuries in which the English and French fought--you would need to do some research on how to reach these. Just one example would be Agincourt, in the country south of Calais ("we few, we happy few, we band of brothers...")

As I mentioned, this might be the unique kind of trip where the flexibility of a rental car would outweigh the cost and hassles of a car. You could pick up the car in Rouen or Caen, and then craft your own trip. It's a little tricky driving into and out of the center of Rouen, so possibly Caen would make more sense for picking up a car.

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