Well apart from your friends' visit co-inciding with the start of the French school half term ..............

Seriously though, you might like to tell them that November 1st is a Bank Holiday in France and shops and banks and most restaurants will NOT be open. As it falls on a Saturday, they'll need to do their weekend's shopping in advance, and the shops might be very full on the Friday afternoon/evening.
There will also be significantly more traffic on the main roads because the holidays last for at least a week and many folk will be trying to snatch a week away or even a long weekend.

For obvious reasons, we don't celebrate Bonfire Night over here!!!

11th November is also a Bank Holiday and the above caveats apply, especially the 'long weekenders' on the roads as the holiday falls on a Tuesday and a lot of people will have stretched their weekends off to take advantage of it.

For cultural events, contact the local tourist board (by internet). There might be a pumpkin festival going on locally (there are several over this side of France) with good family fun.

For that part of France things they might like to enjoy local Cider, Calvados (look on the net for Cidraries (sp) and Distilleries de Calvados), some good tripe (from Caen), sea food and oysters (from Cancale) and of course loads of yummy pastries from all good patisseries, often as close as your local shops!!

OH!! VERY IMPORTANT the hour goes BACK here on the night of Sunday 26 October - 3 am becomes 2am ............ just as in England, so they had better make sure that they don't forget their ferry times!

Hi Alsacienne, many thanks as usual! They are coming back on the Wednesday so should hopefully avoid any bank holiday rush - but I'd forgotton it was half term in France.

Hi Barry, I did a quick search on the WhatsonWhen website using the keyword Normandy and there seems to be a few things of interest. Perhaps you can spoon feed them that link