Norman Conquest: Bayeux

We stayed two nights at Rennes.  Very nice city, beautiful cathedral which was a bright and cheerful neo-classical building from the 1700's, very helpful and friendly hotel staff, tasty creperie restaurants and patisseries.

Bayeux

The hotel was kind enough to allow us to dump our suitcases on them, and I think the elephant from the train had stowed away in one of the cases as they are getting increasingly heavy.  This dumping of cases and elephant meant that we were freed up to wander around Normandy with only back-packs.  Very liberating.

First trip from Rennes was to Bayeux, home of the tapestry and a lovely little city.



Window in the Cathedral at Bayeux

 

 

Bayeux Cathedral

For those who are unaware of the history that all English schoolboys learn, the Bayeux Tapestry was an embroidered pictorial record of the story of the conquest of England by the Normans in 1066.  The tapestry (or embroidery it actually is) is displayed in a museum in Bayeux and is a wonder.  A wonder in that it has survived these nearly 1000 years without being bombed or burnt or cut up into little pieces and sold.  It is a wonder in that it is some 68 metres long, and that it tells in beautiful pictures the history of the reason why William the Duke of Normandy came over the English Channel and battled the Anglo-Saxon armies of King Harold and took the throne.  It explains why and how it actually happened.  Let me explain and give you a hysterical lesson. ...

Our B&B in Bayeux

William the Conqueror was named such because the French for the word "conker" is "conquer".  So, William was actually a really good conker player.  He was promised the throne of England because he was the fourth cousin twice removed of the existing but dying king.  Now, his mate Harold who was fifth cousin once removed from the dying king was sent over to tell William that he should pop over and be crowned but later Harold decided it would be fun to be king himself and so did so.

Now, William thought this wasn't all cricket and so he came over to England hastily and met Harold and beat him at a game of conkers, took the throne and asked his uncle Norman to go around and do a stocktaking of the all the conkers in the country and write them up in a book called the Domesday Book.  Hence the name Norman Conker-quest.


Now you know.


Bayeux showed all this on the tapestry, all the horses and boats and battles and conker matches. 



Painting in the gallery showing the legend of Queen Mathilde and her friends sewing the tapestry. 
They all look sad because they really wanted to be outside playing conkers.  From what I read the tapestry is
actually technically an embroidery and was made in England by retired conker salesmen.

It also displayed a wonderful art museum that displayed essentially a history of art over the ages, also had a museum dedicated to the Normandy D-day invasion of 1944.  Lovely stay at Bayeux and well worth a visit if you get there one day.