Gold Beach + 70

Arromanches under the pale September sun is a very different place from Gold Beach, its code name during the D-Day landings. But the seaweed-covered mass in the foreground is a spare concrete foundation for the Mulberry Harbour, unused and abandoned, and further sections of that massive structure can still be seen offshore.

Today the only soldiers to be seen were from the Czech army, and they were strolling peacefully where the ghosts of the British invaders ran and sheltered and died in the surf.