The Conquest of England must have
almost been regarded as a holy crusade!
When the fleet left the mouth of the river Dives it did not make at once
for Pevensey Bay. The ships instead worked along the coast eastwards to the
Somme, where they waited until a south wind blew, then the vessels all left
the estuary each carrying a light, for it was almost dark. By the next
morning the white chalk of Beachy Head was in sight, and at nine o'clock
William had landed on English soil.
Close to Dives and in sight of the hill on which the Normans were
mustered, there is a small watering-place known as Houlgate-sur-mer. The
houses are charmingly situated among trees, and the place has in recent
years become known as one of those quiet resorts where princes and
princesses with their families may be seen enjoying the simple pleasures
of the seaside, _incognito_. This fact, of course, gets known to
enterprising journalists who come down and photograph these members of the
European royal families wherever they can get them in particularly
unconventional surroundings.
From Houlgate all the way to Trouville the country is wooded and hilly, and
in the hollows, where the timber-framed farms with their thatched roofs are
picturesquely arranged, there is much to attract the visitor who, wearying
of the gaiety of Trouville and its imitators along the coast, wishes to
find solitudes and natural surroundings.
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