Naufragé en France

They're calling it 'naufragé' in the snow. We are in Normandie, in the Calvados region, experiencing full tilt the worst snow event in recent French history. Yesterday I guess I should have seen it coming. It was snowing and the Chunnel was delayed. We arrived in France in light snow, hit the highway, and while some of the traffic was slow, there wasn't anything awful until Caen. We stopped there to visit the Musee de la Memoire, an excellent museum about the lead up to, events of, and life after WWII. I became saturated by it all pretty quickly. There's only so much death, killing, torture, and suffering that one person can read about before having enough. I got a lump in my throat at every Canadian flag. Patriotism hits me at the strangest times.
We got back in the car, anticipating a snowy but normal drive to our destination, Courselles-sur-mer, supposedly 1/2 an hour away. Snow. Lots of snow. We got stuck travelling a road across a field, just outside of Bény, as did 2 other cars, which would have been a problem if not for 2 tractors who came to our rescue and towed us across. By the time we got to Courselles, there were gale force winds off the sea and the drifts of snow were easily 3 feet in places. Dinner was pleasant, and we were really surprised that the restaurant was full on a Monday night. Others stranded by the snow? Locals not wanting to cook or without power? Who knows. The storm did not let up, and we went to bed to the sound of the wind howling outside.
Today, we were told that all roads out of Courselles were closed. We should have listened, but more on that later. We hadn't come all this way to hide in a hotel room! We walked to the Juno Beach Centre, and found it closed, but read the monuments outside and wandered the gardens in the wind and the snow, and honoured the memory of our Canadian soldiers anyway. The snow was brown because it had sand mixed up in it. I felt badly for the trees and flowers who had started to bloom.
In spite of the warnings, we decided to try and get out. First impasse - backing out of our parking space. Our Audi has lousy traction. Next impasse - the driveway to the hotel. No shovel, so we shovelled it with the trays from breakfast (note to La Cremaillere - Le Gytan - if you are missing 3 breakfast trays, we've adopted them). Didn't make it very far before getting really stuck. This time, we were rescued by a large tractor who offered to tow us 3k to the nearest hotel. We were pulled past several cars in ditches half covered by drifting snow. He was very kind, and dropped us here at the Hostellerie Saint-Martin in Creully. Not as far away as we were hoping (we were trying to get to Bayeux), but at least we're away from the coast (even though I may have heard on the news that Caen, where we are trying to get back to, may have been the worst hit in the region, which would explain the short power outages while we were in the museum yesterday). The hotel is lovely. We are warm and dry, not stuck in a ditch in the middle of nowhere.
That's what I'm afraid of - getting stuck in a ditch in the middle of nowhere. They are forcasting rain for tomorrow, which may help with some of the roads, but it's the drifts that are the problem. Some of the roads here in Creully are clear enough, until the drift at the corner where we'd need to turn. Our original itinerary has been simplified a lot. Today's plan was to do Juno Beach Centre, drive to Arromanches and do that, drive to Bayeux and see the tapestry, drive to Rouen to walk around and have dinner, before driving to stay the night near Dieppe. Tomorrow was supposed to be touring some things in Dieppe before driving on to Vimy. Now, we're hoping to make it out tomorrow and spend the day on the road. Only tomorrow knows whether we'll be able to make it to Vimy to sleep tomorrow night, or not.