A symbolic crossing from Portsmouth to Normandy at the weekend represented an upbeat conclusion to a busy five-month deployment to the Middle East and beyond for Royal Navy destroyer HMS Gloucester.

The Fighting G led a flotilla of 17 military, merchant and historic vessels out of Portsmouth Harbour on Saturday morning on their way to the French beaches chosen for the D-Day landings in June 1944.

Having anchored off the French coast over the weekend, Gloucester retraced her path back to Portsmouth, meeting up with French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier FS Charles de Gaulle on the way.

The Type 42 ship escorted the 40,000-ton French carrier into the Solent, where she will be anchored until June 10 as part of a series of ceremonies marking the centenary of Entente Cordiale, the Anglo-French alliance.

Gloucester escorted the Charles de Gaulle for much of her Agapanthe 04 deployment, which took the French task group into the Gulf and into the Indian Ocean, including exercises with United Arab Emirates naval forces.

Gloucester visited Goa for training with the Indian Navy, while a visit to the great port city of Mumbai – formerly known as Bombay – allowed volunteers from the ship’s company to carry out humanitarian work amongst the city’s poor, refurbishing a crèche for children of labourers and a home for the disabled.

On their way back towards the Suez Canal the destroyer teamed up with the Saudi Arabian navy for the week-long Exercise Red Shark.

The ship’s Commanding Officer, Cdr Malcolm Cree, said: “Working so closely wit the French in Agapanthe 04, being fully integrated into their task group and procedures, was an unusual experience for us, but we fully tested new tactics, communications and other advances.

“And escorting Charles de Gaulle to mark 100 years of the Entente Cordiale is an exciting end to our deployment.”