Bayeux cathedral and the mill races of the Aure

Notre-Dame de Bayeux is the one building that fixes the town: a Romanesque nave and crypt carrying a Gothic upper church, two western spires, and a lantern tower capped in green copper that you can see from the ring road. The frame worth planning for is the chevet — the east end, a thicket of buttresses and tall windows, seen from the little garden behind it in the last two hours of the afternoon, when the light comes across and the stone goes honey-coloured. The west front is in shadow by then; do it in the morning instead.

The town below is small and walkable, and it survived. Bayeux was taken on 7 June 1944 and never shelled, so the lanes around Rue Saint-Martin and Rue des Bouchers are genuine fifteenth- to eighteenth-century stone rather than reconstruction. Five minutes downhill the little river Aure splits into mill races that run behind the houses, past a working waterwheel and a stone washhouse — green water, wet masonry, overhanging branches, and almost nobody there at eight in the morning.

One thing to say plainly: the Bayeux Tapestry museum is closed for rebuilding and is not expected to reopen before autumn 2027. It is the reason most people come, and it is not available, so build the session around the cathedral, the river and the coast instead.

The cathedral is a working church with free entry. Services take priority and a session waits them out; rules on tripods and commercial shoots are the parish's to set, so ask before the day rather than at the door.