Camping Reine Mathilde

You'll likely be champing to go immediately beachwards from the site, but straight after that get straight along to the cobbled medieval streets, half-timbered houses, 11th-century cathedral and beaut botanic gardens of fab Bayeux on the Aure river, one of the most popular tourist towns in the area. It is, mais oui, also home to the world-famed Bayeux Tapestry, the eye-wateringly fab 68 metres of 11th-century tapestry telling the tale of the 1066 Norman invasion of England. The tapestry is now – natch – a UNESCO World Heritage Site: go and see it in the aptly named Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux. If you're in Normandy to explore the D-Day beaches and World War II heritage, have a look too at the British war cemetery in Bayeux, and at the war museum, with displays covering the 1945 time from D-Day to Normandy's full liberation.