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Being a License Normandy Guide
I feel it's important to be clear about what you should expect from a guide when you visit Normandy.
What "being a Guide" means regarding the French law and restrictions: A Guide is someone who has passed an exam and who must have a comprehensive knowledge of his country and, of course, of his region. A Guide has a professional working card, given by the French Ministry of Tourism. This person is allowed to guide everywhere, including the inside and the outside of every monument.
Guide should not be used as a password as it is used by a large quantity of people, coming from foreign countries who have no diploma and request to be paid in cash.
Many companies pretending to be specialist on BoB's tours as exemple are like actors playing in a theatre, repeating days after days the same story that they memorised from a text, don't ask them to change a word or a site.
You've all heard horror-stories from friends booking none Official Guides "courier" in Europe who hardly speak a word of English, or fluent in English with no local history knowledge, don't let it happen to you!
Anyone pretending to be an official guide in France by presenting another document than the License Guide Card given by the Ministry of Tourism is a liar. Titles like Guild of Battlefield Guides have no meaning or any value in France no more than Blue Guide which is restricted to Great Britain, as if I wanted to use my French Guide Diploma to guide in the US and pretending to be a specialist in US History.
The right designation of those persons is courier or tour conductor.
Knowledge of the region - all Normandy guides and couriers should know how to get to the Pointe du Hoc, Sainte Mere Eglise and Pegasus Bridge, I hope. But when you are on site, then you realise the difference between a guide and a courier.
The Courier will recite with more or less accuracy a text coming from one book. Don't ask him any question out of his lesson, like Norman history or architecture.
The proof is that they propose you a very restricted selection of tours, there are over 2000 memorials dedicated to WWII in Normandy, spread out all over an area of 4000 square miles. Of course, it is impossible to know all of them and everything about our region. But when you are a native, and when you have spent over 20 years to study your history and confirmed your knowledges by Official exams, you can give your visitors a better chance to answer their expectations. Anyway much, much better than someone who comes from a foreign country and has been here for few years or few months. Would you ask a French to guide you on Gettysburg battlefield or to a local guide? To my opinion, there's neither question nor doubt, I would choose a local citizen.
