Experience the best of Bayeux

A strip of embroidered linen almost seventy metres long, made in the eleventh century, tells the story of the Norman conquest of England in 1066 and hangs in its own museum in town. The cathedral, whose crossing spire towers over the rooftops, was consecrated in 1077 with William the Conqueror present. Bayeux escaped bombing in 1944, so its old centre of half-timbered and stone houses along the River Aure is largely intact.

It was among the first French towns to be liberated after the Allied landings in June 1944, and the Battle of Normandy Memorial museum and a large British war cemetery tell that story. The landing beaches lie a short way north: Gold, Juno and Omaha, the Mulberry harbour remains at Arromanches, the clifftop battery at Longues-sur-Mer, and the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer.

Normandy's table is built on butter, cream, apples and the sea: Camembert, Pont-l'Évêque and Livarot cheeses, cider and calvados, mussels, sole, and scallops from the bay of the Seine. A Saturday market fills the streets around the cathedral.