D-Day Landings South Coast UK

A pick up from your local area as we start our journey to Weymouth, with an en-route visit to the Tank Museum at Bovington where our focus will be on the armour that was used on D-Day and during the Normandy Campaign including the DD Tank, Sherman and Sherman Firefly, Churchill Crocodile, Tiger, Panther and Pz IV. This evening our guide will give a presentation on the Normandy Campaign in the comfort of your hotel.

We spend our morning in Weymouth which was the location for the US Navy Advance Amphibious Base and with our expert guide we will take a walk along Weymouth Esplanade to the Nothe Fort. Following the route taken by most of the Infantry that landed on OMAHA Beach, hearing their stories and making a stop at the US D Day Memorial. Entrance is included to Nothe Fort, where we will see its substantial collection of memorabilia from the era and commanding views overlooking Weymouth Bay and Portland Harbour. This afternoon we will visit Portland where we continue our D-Day story, you can still see two caissons of the Mulberry Harbour and some of the ‘hards’, which were the concrete ramps that were built to load equipment and vehicles. Portland is also home to The Naval Cemetery where many casualties from the Second World War were laid to rest, including 12 German airmen. Our final stop today is the Castletown D-Day Centre, which is an excellent ‘hands on’ museum, it has an American focus, which is no surprise as this is where many American troops made the crossing to Normandy from.

Saying farewell to Weymouth, we head for Portsmouth via Moreton, which was the location of the US 12th Evacuation Hospital, where the first casualties started arriving on June 7th. We will also drive past Wimborne Minster which is very close to Tarrant Rushton where the gliders departed from to attack Pegasus Bridge. Arriving in Portsmouth we will visit Southwick House the HQ for Naval Operations, where Eisenhower ‘Made the Call’ to both delay and commit to the invasion, with the actual planning map still on display. Later today we spend time on Portsmouth’s Historic Seafront and visit the D-Day Museum, we will also pay our respects at the Portsmouth Naval Memorial, where we will see over 400 names who fell in June and July 1944, many off the Normandy Coast, with no less than eight VC winners included among them. Our tour comes to an end as we start making our way home.