Alastair McKenzie Author

Mary Anne Evans has over 35 years' experience writing and editing guidebooks and travel articles. Having started visiting France when she was five, she now owns a house in the Auvergne and runs her own specialist website (Maryannesfrance.com), which outlines suggestions for trips to French regions, previews forthcoming events and offers practical travel advice. Normandy has always been one of her favourite destinations thanks to its proximity, long sandy beaches, great cities and shared history. A visit in 2008 to the newly opened Visitor Centre at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial revealed compelling and emotional stories about ordinary individual soldiers involved in the fighting. It set Evans off on many journeys around the D-Day Landing beaches. New sites like the British Normandy Memorial, which opened in 2021, have revealed fresh insights as she discovers ever more about the history of Operation Overlord. Alastair McKenzie (mechtraveller.com) was a travel editor and presenter in local, national and international radio (Classic FM) for a decade from 1989, before moving online where he became an active member of the travel blogger and content creator community, and a regular speaker at social media travel conferences. A member of the British Guild of Travel Writers since 2002, he now runs a specialist niche blog (mechtraveller.com), which focuses on mechanical, technical and historic points of interest for travellers, including battlefield sites and military museums. Like the Allies, he first came to Normandy as a young man by sea. During the eighties he sailed and skippered yachts around most of the harbours on the European coast from Holland to Spain, including Ouistreham & Cherbourg. Since then he has explored most of Normandy by land and written about its key D-Day sites.