Caen; Sunday, 01 September, 2019

I had an OK breakfast and then, after arranging a late checkout, headed out of the hotel to continue exploring the city. As it was a Sunday there was more chance that the Men’s Abbey might have been open for visitors, which turned out to be correct, though I had to wait about 10 minutes for the morning service to finish before being able to join the significant number of tourists looking around. The church is spectacular on the inside with soaring celinings and perhaps most importantly of all the grave of Duke William of Normandy, William the Conqueror, located infront of the main altar.

I managed to time leaving the abbey perfectly and was able to catch a bus back round to the centre of town and change straight onto a tram up to the top of the castle, thus having to avoid walking up the slopes into the main gate.

I continued my wander from the previous evening through the castle. The castle is home to two museums, the Musée de Normandie looking at the archaeology and history of the region , and the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Fine arts gallery. I only had about an hour left before I needed to head back to the hotel and start my journey home so I wasn’t quite certain which one I should visit – I checked in the central ticket office for the castle and they said that both were free as it was the first Sunday of the month, so as I wasn’t spending any money I decided to have a quick look around both.

I just about managed to squeeze both museums into the time I had and then headed back to the hotel to finish off packing my bag, checkout and then head over to the airport.

Normally I’d be a bit worried that I was sat at the bus stop in the centre of town just 70 minutes before my flight was due to depart, but with the combination of a hand baggage only flight and a tiny airport I didn’t think this would be a problem, and it turned out not to be. If it wasn’t for the infrequency of the buses on a Sunday I could probably have left it even later as I was still sat around for about 20 minutes in the landside part of the airport before they opened security screening for the London flight.

The flight back to London was quick and we ended up arriving back into Southend about 15 minutes early, which meant there was more than enough time to make the connection for the rail replacement bus into Southend itself – engineering works meaning there were no train back to London from the airport. As the two lines from Southend are operated by two different companies they are singularly unhelpful in their co-operation, so the bus only went to the Greater Anglia station at Southend Victoria, it was then a 10 minute walk across Southend to Southend Central to pick up the C2C train back into London to finish my journey home.