Normandy - Normandie (1 Viewer)

[lou020]

Just had a fantastic week in Normandie, lovely camp site,The pointe du Jour at Franceville - merville, right on the beach.:Cool:
only down side was we were visiting the big german gun batteries on the cliffs, and some evil scroat smashed our hire car side window (Our fault for leaving a pump bag on the floor in the front). we wern't away for more than 30 mins and lots of people around. but there was a couple of iffy looking people in a camper van (vw type van)

In the bag was my passport + paper license as we had just picked up the hire car,
Anyway we told the girl in the tourist office in the car park and she phoned the gendarmerie.
BLOODY HELL within 15 mins, they came with sirens, flashing lights the lot.
They stepped out of their van holding our bag complete with passport etc. The scroats had thrown the bag out of the window just down the road.

The gendarmes then dusted the car for finger prints, cleaned all the glass off the seat and took out the remaining bits from the door window.
we then followed them back to their station in pont bassin? where they taped up the window.
We were amazed at their actions

If only our police could be this good
PS.what a beautiful place normandie is, and superb museums.:thumb:

 

[Wildbill]

see a British coper doing that
they would probably give you a bill for being so stupid
and find your bag not a chance

 

[Scattycat]

It's France, what else would you expect??:thumb:

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[Allanm]

see a British coper doing that
they would probably give you a bill for being so stupid
and find your bag not a chance

They would probably accuse you of stealing it yourself to claim on the insurance!
Glad you got it all sorted out, and Normandy is beautiful
Allan

 

[Chris]

Those guns are fantastic aren't they?

We were there in August. On the way back from there my brother had quite a big accident involving 3 cars. He too had nothing but praise for the police:thumb:

 

[Peter JohnsCross MH]

see a British coper doing that
they would probably give you a bill for being so stupid
and find your bag not a chance

There would have been at least four noddy cars with flashing lights blinding everyone complete with eight plods, seven of them standing around chewing gum doing nothing, campsite would have been sealed off and no one could have gone in or out for at least eight hours.

Peter

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[HymerB544]

Normandy

I love France and everything about the French way of life, including the way they blatantly disregard any EU rules which don't suit them and you are right to applaud their police for such prompt and effective action, but I do not agree with the general responses rubbishing our own police.

When you are in France the police are omnipresent, which is a good thing; visibility is the best form of crime prevention. But over here, thanks to a succession of swinging cuts on essential public services such as the police, and to the huge burden of administrative paperwork caused no doubt by the Human Rights act which again, no doubt, the gendarmes ignore, our police are too thin on the ground. :helptitanic:

 

[Easyliving]

As has already been said our police do the best they can but they spend far too much time filling in forms. A couple of weeks ago we were on the A10 in Hertfordshire when we were directed by a policeman into a car park. There were at least 15 police officers and PCSOs checking insurance, tax, lights etc on the few cars passing. Now I am all for catching people with no insurance, dodgy tyres etc but this was overkill and their time would have been better spent being 'visible' walking the streets.

In this country if you have something stolen from your car the best you can hope for is a crime number from a call centre.

We stayed on the aire at Merville Franceville Plage on our trip last year, I assume this is more or less the same town that the OP stayed at. The (free) aire is about 50 yards from the beach in the photo. This was taken on 24th June - look how crowded it is!

 

[jb0371old]

Hire Car

You do realise this a motorhome website

we have just got back tyesterday ourselves but we didnt do merville just pegasus bridge,. st mere eglise (worst museum due to being small and not much in english) arromanche etc.

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[frogijock]

Talking about how different the Gendarmerie are in comparison to the UK version of Police, We had an attempted break-in at our house in France, the police arrived took photographs fingerprints and shoe prints, they were there for around 2 hours, the next day they came back and informed us that they had a father and two children (son and daughter) in custody, charged with the attempted break- in, if this had been here I would have been given a crime number and then forgotten. I only have praise for the French Gendarmes, they done a brilliant job. :thumb:

 

[lou020]

Hire Car

You do realise this a motorhome website

we have just got back tyesterday ourselves but we didnt do merville just pegasus bridge,. st mere eglise (worst museum due to being small and not much in english) arromanche etc.

We hired a car rather than taking down the awning and moving the m/h every day,
The yanks always had me believe they were the first ones to liberate a village, st mer eglise,,
apparently not so ,the brits did, it was ranville, just down the road from pegasus bridge.
By the way what a great museum pegasus bridge is.

 

[jools66]

Sorry to here about the smash & grab (Swines :Angry

We visited the gun battery on Sunday. after we went to visit my uncles grave at Hermanville-sur-Mer, then back to Pegasus bridge (asked if we could stay in there car park, "Yes" they said and at 5 o'clock lock us in and went home! Did the museum this morning and found out some more about my uncles role in the D-Day landings :thumb: Great place well worth a visit.

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[stcyr]

Since last July we`ve seen one gendarme in the nearest town, buying a packet of baccy and TWO on Sunday morning here in the village, walking back to their car past our house after the Toussaint/Remembrance procession which they had just participated in (unarmed as they always are in these events) - they came in for a Calva...

The place is TEEMING with`em!

About 3 years ago we had a very distinctive pair of spotlights nicked off the old Merc MH, in Wales after reporting it the police took 4 days to take an interest and that was to offer the usual insurance number and to offer me counselling (!) for the trauma. My only satisfaction was to picture the scroat fitting the lights to his Nova/Saxo and scratching under his baseball cap wondering why the lights were so dim (24v)

Ps: The paucity of gendarmes mentioned above was not just in the immediate neighbourhood but over several 100+ km trips...