I’m back home in England. It’s a lot noisier than it was in Bayeux, but then, the summer school kids are still here. It’s a Friday night, which means an end-of-week party, curated by the team leaders. That’s what we always used to do. You can tell because the music pumping out of the hall is almost entirely hits from the 2010’s. Twenty-somethings revelling in university nostalgia at a party ostensibly for children. Every once in a while a track comes on that they all seem to know: Freed from Desire, Mme Pavoshko, the Macarena. I’m almost nostalgic for Sur ma route, ever the anthem of my summer school days. Almost.

Blimey, but it’s a long ferry ride from Caen, though. As I caught the overnight ferry on my way out on Monday, I slept through most of the journey, but this time I watched the whole thing from the seats. At first you’re riding parallel to the sloping French coast to the east, and the seabirds follow you out: pairs of scoters, heavyset black-backed gulls, solitary gannets and the odd fulmar. Then it’s nothing but sea in all directions. England, on the horizon, hides behind a wall of cloud and mist, and the sea seems to fade into the sky. There’s always at least one or two shopping containers in the distance, the lettering on their hulls so vast you can read it from miles away. In a trick of the light, an Evergreen tanker seems to float in the void between the sea and the sky.

More than once, I tried to imagine what it must have been like for the soldiers crossing the Channel. The Allies riding into the jaws of death on the beaches of Normandy; and the Normans themselves, some nine hundred years prior, setting out to rewrite the history of a nation. The Conquered liberating the land of the Conqueror. There’s a poetic symmetry to that. Perhaps that’s why Normandy felt so special. It really is a history fanatic’s paradise and I couldn’t recommend the place more highly.

I really enjoyed being back in France. Toulouse was OK and Bordeaux pleasant enough, but there’s a magic in the north I’d never noticed before. It was also a pleasant reminder that I can handle myself just as capably in French as I can in Spanish, and I needed that. I should get to know that beautiful country some more over the years. Normandy was especially beautiful and I may well be back someday.

But for now, my legs could use a rest. And I could do with the sun making a return, since my feet, having been in sandals for four days, look like something you might find in a Bernard Matthew’s packet in the frozen food aisle in Tesco’s. BB x