Week 5 – Paris and then home

Our trip is at an end, and tomorrow morning we pack our bag for the final time, throw on our back packs, and pull our case to the Saint Germain Des Pres metro station, to catch the train to Charles De Gaulle, to start the long flight home. 

We arrived in Paris on Monday morning to drop the car off at Peugeot.  What the GPS said was a 25 minute trip, turned out to be an hour, as unplanned for roadworks meant the trip was bumpier, slower and longer than expected.  Fortunately, the car played ball and didn’t run out of petrol – you return it empty not full.  As we got right into the centre of Paris, the roads widened, the pace quickened, the road signs deserted, and it was something of a wholly unsavoury mugging by scooters, trucks and taxis, all with more idea of where they were going, how to get there, and more need to be there quicker than we did.  A complete circuit round the Arc de Triomphe was once again the highlight of the journey into the centre of Paris.

We have spent the last 3 days walking the main sights of Paris – the Arch, the Champs Elysees, Place de la Concorde, and the Eiffel tower – our feet might never be the same again.  Our 3 nights at the Hotel La Perle, have been as brilliant as they were the last time we were here, with all the narrow streets full of restaurants, bars and boutique shops.  We’ve tried a few of the restaurants and bars, and have one more to try out tonight.

Until the next time.

Cheers,

David & Anne.

End of Week 4 – The Loire to Versailles

In the last few days, we’ve been to a chateau, a local town market, an American BBQ, camped through two of the most amazing electrical storms we’ve ever experienced, eaten a meal we’ve waited 5 years to repeat, finished camping and moved to the outskirts of Paris – busy, exciting, and sometimes frightening. 

The chateau was at Chaumont.  This is another chateau that had been in private ownership, but was taken over by the state when the owners ran into financial difficulty in the 1930’s.  Today the chateau is also known for it international garden exhibition that exists within its grounds.  People are invited to create an exhibit, and this year there are 25 of them for us to wander around.  Like most artistic ventures, there was some real gold, and some not so inspiring stuff, but our favourites are shown in the photos.  It was a good couple of hours wandering round different garden settings. 

The Chateau itself was quite interesting, for a big house.  There were of course, some very nice rooms, but continuing the arty theme of the place, there was also an art exhibition in the disused (and entirely run down) part of the chateau.  The art was essentially photographs made into led light stained glass panel that were hung in front of windows in these unused rooms.  While the art was interesting enough, it was interesting to see what happens to these massive houses, when the upkeep gets too much, and the family retreats to much smaller well kept parts of the chateau.

The highlight of lunch was being told off by a very officious, French speaking, young woman on a horse.  We had bought a filled roll, and were sitting on a small wall beside a nice lawn, actually we were sitting over the fence on the grass, which despite the fact that the Chateau had acre after acre of grass, you weren’t allowed on the grass, so we thought she was telling us off for having the audacity for putting out bottoms on the grass, but then in turned out that there was a reserved area at the back of a building for people to eat their sandwiches, and we had to go there, so as not to make the place look untidy.

The French town markets are always enjoyable, and different areas obviously have different local flavours, some are little more than the local retailers moving their goods onto tables out onto the street (Bayeux), but others are a real mish mash of local producers, artists, crafts people who come together in a different town each day to sell their wares.  The best ones are in the South of France – Provence and the Dordogne, because there you do get such a wide range of things on offer – particularly art.

The market we visited this time was in Loches, about 30ks down the road.  This market covered most of the centre of the town, and had lots of fish, meat, cheese, bread stalls, some clothes, jewellery, and hand bags.  The highlight for me was seeing that they sold dead pigeons – it seemed the only good thing to do with pigeons, which are still occupying too much of my attention at the start and end of each day.  Anne bought a nice scarf and a handbag in the market, which was cool.

Lunch was interesting, in that we chose the restaurant, requested our usual table for two outside, and sat down to wait for the menu to arrive.  Next thing, the entrée arrives, then the main, finally desert and coffee.  We didn’t realise, but the restaurant only had a set menu – it was a one man band operating everything, and all we had to do was order the pitcher of wine.  As luck would have it, the lunch was very good, and probably the most reasonably priced food we’ve eaten on the holiday.

Evenings at the camp ground have been interesting.  It starts off with the hot air balloons that float over us every night.  The first night, there was only one, but since then, business has been up, and on a couple of nights we saw 5 of them.  Then one night, the campground put on an American BBQ, and a musician, so we went along to that.  The BBQ was good, and the musician excellent.  For some reason, we got front row seats – it might have been that it started at 7:00pm, which is very early for us.  It was a very enjoyable evening, good food, good music, and we got to meet the Dutch family that are camping next to us.

Then there are the electrical storms – Amazing!  They start about 3am, with Continuous thunder and lightning, rain, and on the second night, really strong winds.  Night one, we were woken by the thunder, which coincided with the rain starting, and carried on for a couple of hours.  Night two, I could see the lightning off in the distance, and the thunder was barely audible.  Anne was awake, there was no wind, so being an aspiring Jim Hickey, I said, “it’s miles away, it should pass us by”.  Queue the wind, which we thought was going to blow the tent away.  That got things moving, and sure enough the storm arrived minutes later.  It was interesting watching the lightning start off visible through the wall of the tent at our feet, then start lighting up the whole roof of the tent, then migrate on to the wall behind our heads.  We wondering about going and sitting in the car to watch the show, but we would have got drenched getting to the car, and anyway, we were well protected by our tent – right?  After the first incident of rain, we don’t have anything in the tent at night, because the water gets in under the tent – nothing gets wet, as long as it isn’t on the floor of the tent, and if it’s in the car, then it’s not on the floor of the tent.  All our bedding, and us, is on top of the air bed, so it doesn’t get wet at all. Morning dawns to blue skies both days – amazing !

The two electrical storms came on the last two nights we had planned to camp, so it did have a benefit in that the tent got a good wash before we had to pack it up in preparation for getting it back through NZ Customs.  A couple of hours in the morning, and the tent was dried out and packed up.  Saturday night was spent in Amboise, the scene of one of the most enjoyable lunches I’ve ever had, 5 years ago, and we were keen to go back to re-live the experience.  The highlight was the delightfully named Geese Gizzard salad, and much to my delight, the item was still on the menu, and also much to my delight, the experience was as enjoyable as I recalled it 5 years ago.  Anne’s meal was also very enjoyable, but she went for more traditional fare than the Geese Gizzard salad.

First night back in a hotel and of course there was no electrical storm.  The receptionist at the hotel was full of stories about the amazing storm they had endured the night before, and was then pretty gob smacked when we advised that we had been camping just down the road that night.

Tonight we are in a hotel in Versailles, and drop the car off tomorrow morning, and have 3 nights in Paris, before heading back home on Thursday.  I’ll get one more blog post in before we leave. 

Start of Week 4 – The Loire

Eat, chateau, eat, chateau, eat, sleep, eat, chateau, eat, chateau, eat, sleep, could sum up our time in the Loire so far.  More importantly, we are back camping, and last night (Tuesday night) it rained.  Thunder, lightning and rain is forecast for Thursday and Friday nights, which are our last two nights of camping.  This fact and forecast is bringing into question my statement “camping is fun, as long as you can chose”.  The question is, when to chose.  We survived last night no problems, the tent coped well, and any inconveniences caused by it still being raining this morning, can be sorted out by a slight change of plan at night – more stuff in the car before it starts to rain.  But the question is, when does it stop being fun and start being an endurance quest.  I know some people who would be screaming “Harden up” at their computer right now.  Anne has just returned from washing the wine glasses and decided that we are sticking it out, so there’s that topic over with.

So there is the good news – wine is on the way, as I type, prior to us heading off to dinner in the campground.  Last night, we got involved in the music quiz, with a retired couple from York.  We didn’t know there was a quiz on, but once we were there and been asked to team up, what could we say.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and as long as the music stayed in the 80’s or earlier, we were ok, and ended up 3^rd for the evening.  The winners, who didn’t get a prize, seemed a bit dodgy, given that they were pre-natal group friends of the owners, one of the owners was on their team, and the other owner was running the quiz – we was robbed.

So far we have visited 3 chateaus – Chambord, Cheverney and Loches, and also taken in market day in Loches, so not quite the 4 that I mentioned above, but who’s counting.  We will do our 4^th tomorrow.  We have been to the Loire several times before, but have always tended more to the western end of the river, so this time we are further east, and concentrating on seeing new Chateaus. 

Chambord was an architectural marvel, but a residential disaster – no mind, we weren’t being asked to live there.  Nonetheless, it seems to have spent its entire existence having been a rarely used hunting lodge by the king of France.  Once Versailles was built, and the Kings started going there, it was largely forgotten, although there were various restorations and upgrades made to it.  Since it has been taken over by the state and open to the public, it is treated as a national treasure.  While it is an architectural marvel, with all it’s symmetry, it’s round towers, spiral stair cases and the like, it is also hugely frustrating because its symmetry is at a macro level, at a micro level, nothing is a like.  Windows, exterior decoration, roofs etc on different sides of the chateau all get different treatments, so as a say, at a high level it looks perfect, when you look at the detail it doesn’t quite stack  up.  I say it was a residential disaster, because it is built entirely of sand stone, there isn’t a room in it that has a wooden floor or ceiling, so for the first centuries of its life, it was freezing cold in winter, and mosquito ridden in summer.  There were some residential appartments that have been restored to the way they would have been back in the day, which was good to see.  The Chateau also had some interesting video clips to talk us through its history and architecture. 

Anyway, we had an enjoyable couple of hours there walking all over the insides and battlements of the chateau.

The Loire is the first place on our trip that we have seen sun flowers, and they are out in all the splendour where ever we go.  They are just the happiest of flowers and it’s always great to see their heads up following the sun during the day.  Their heads were hung a bit low this morning, weighed down by the weight of the rain that fell overnight, but it’s still great to drive along with them in the fields beside you.

After Chambord, we headed off to Cheverny – our next chateau.  This was a totally different kettle of fish.  It is someone’s house.  The family has owned it for 600 years.  They live in apartments on the top floor, but the rest of the house is open to the public everyday except for Christmas and New Year’s day.  The rooms are all very ornately decorated, and unfortunately for us, when we were there there must have been about 500 people going single file through what is a very large house.  It was still very much shoulder to shoulder, and with the temperature hitting the low 30’s it was really hot.  

End of Week 3 –The American Military Museum and Le Mans

Today we visited the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, which is the American cemetery for the soldiers who lost their lives in WWII, primarily in the D-Day invasions.  The Cemetery is located in Colleville-sur-Mer, at the top of a cliff overlooking Omaha Beach.  Similar to the Commonwealth Cemeteries, it is kept in pristine condition, with crosses to mark the bodies of the soldiers, and a long wall with the names of soldiers whose bodies were never found. 

As you arrive at the cemetery, you get the option of either visiting the cemetery, or going to the visitor centre.  We chose to visit the cemetery first, and see the memorial, the chapel and walk around amongst some of the graves.  We went to find the grave of Theodore Roosevelt, the Son of the President of the same name, who was the only General to land at the time of the initial landing, onto Utah Beach, and gave the command to get going with the war, even though tides had meant that they had landed two miles away from their expected landing spot.  He died a month later, of a heart attack at the age of 57.

We also saw two graves side by side that had a small American flag under each one.  I went to have a look, and saw that they were two brothers, Robert and Preston Niland, who were killed a day apart from one another – Robert on D-Day, Preston the day after.  We  later learned that this was the family that the fictional movie Saving Private Ryan was based on.  In real life, the third brother who was missing in the Pacific was later found in a Japanese POW camp.

After visiting the Cemetery, we went to the visitor centre, which was fascinating, and contained many of the statistics about the D-Day landings, and the logistics of how the whole operation was put together.  There was also a film interviewing Dwight Eisenhower, and there was a film about 3 particular soldiers who had been part of D-Day and their personal stories.

On Sunday, we transitioned to the Loire, and seeing an opportunity to do something new that was a possible means of getting there, we stopped for the night at Le Mans, home of the famous 24 hour race.  This was a change from our original plan, as we had planned to go to Brittany before the Loire, but once we got to Europe, and discovered all the things there were to do around the WWI sites, and the Normandy beaches, and indeed Normandy itself, we decided to drop Brittany and take more time in the other places.

The Le Mans race has been going since 1923, and we spent a couple of hours visiting the museum there, which is right beside the race track.  The Museum had an impressive display of vintage cars, as well as many of the wining cars from about the last 20 years.  We weren’t able to see the race track because there were some local bike races going on that day.  We spent the evening in a hotel in the centre of Le Mans, catching the start of the last stage of the Tour de France, and going to a local restaurant.  The last stage of the TdF left from Versailles, which is where we will be staying next Sunday night, so it was nice to get a reminder of how beautiful the Palace and the gardens at Versailles are.

The drive from Normandy all the way through to the Loire, was on the great French motorway system, which although you have to pay for some parts of it, is a great way to cover large distances in a very short space of time.  The charges tend to act as limiting factor on the amount of traffic that use it, and for the pace that you are able to maintain, and the fact that you can get directly from A to B without having to crawl through all those wonderful little French towns, it really is money well spent.  Compared to the quality of the roads we encountered in the Neterlands and Belgium and the roads we have experienced in Germany in the past, there really is something to be said to paying tolls to use a road.

Week 3 – Friday 19th July – The Tapestry, and the Battle of Normandy Memorial Museum

We’ve been staying in a campground 7ks outside of Bayeux for the past 5 days, and although we’ve been into, through or around Bayeux everyday since we’ve been here, we haven’t as yet managed to see the Bayeux Tapestry – The medieval story of how William the Conqueror took over the throne of England.  Now, I have to confess that I was on a bit of a hiding to nothing here, because Anne had rolled her eyes around in her head whenever I’d mentioned that we’d go and see the Tapestry, and I must confess that other than “we’re in the hood”, I didn’t really have a compelling reason to go and see it.  Sure I’d studied it a bit when I was trying to learn Latin at High School, and Mum had talked a lot about it at the same time, but beyond that, my only knowledge of it came when Stephen Fry did one of his Qi programs on it, about a week before we left.  That increased my knowledge of it vastly to the point that I now knew that it wasn’t a tapestry, and it probably wasn’t produced in Bayeux.

So, off we went into Bayeux to visit its famous tapestry.  Surprise number 1 – it is popular.  There was a queue of people waiting to see it, and we had to wait for other people while they followed the story on the tapestry.  Surprise number 2 – it was really interesting – Anne had to concede that it was well worth the trip and we learnt an awful lot about the tapestry, the characters in it, who made it, and a bunch of other really useful information. 

The story so far:

The year is 1064, Edward the Confessor was the King of England, who had no successors.  He wanted William the Bastard, (a nephew I think) to succeed him, so he sent Harold off to France (Where William was the Duke of Normandy) to let William Know.  Harold got blown off course, and ended  up in the hands of some bad asses, and William had to negotiate his release (Remember that – William negotiated Harold’s release).  William and Harold then seemed to hit it off, and went off to do some conquesting in Brittany.  William Knighted Harold (Does him another good turn).  William makes Harold swear that he will honour Edward’s dying wishes and make William the king of England.  Harold returns to England, Edward dies, Harold takes over the throne (I think we all know who the bastard is now then).  William builds boats, provisions his army, sets sail for England, sets up camp just out of Hastings, and waits for Harold to show up (he’d been up in York seeing off another potential pretender to his throne).  The battle occurs, goes on for most of the day, ebbs and flows a bit, finally Williams men seize the initiative, kill Harold through the eye, William wins the battle, and is crowned a somewhat unpopular King of England, and becomes William the Conqueror from that day forward.  There endeth the Tapestry.

Anyway, that is the fairly irreverent 21^st century male version.  In the 11^th Century, the story was told to some woman, who were so consumed with the story, that they started sewing it into their tea towels.  “oooh, what did he do then?  No!” stitch, stitch, stich, stich, stich.  By the time they had finished, these distinguished craftswoman had created a 70m work of art, that through the centuries has been coveted, abused, hidden from invaders, displayed in cathedrals, confiscated by dictators, restored and now presented for all the public to see in a tightly environment controlled atmosphere.

The tapestry was apparently commissioned by Bishop Odo, William’s half brother, and the Bishop of Bayeux.  He was part of the conquering party, but being a Bishop, he couldn’t draw blood, he was however allowed to use a mace to knock people senseless, so I took a bit of a liking to him – seemed a bit of a conflicted character – religious, but violent – but ultimately had his heart in the right place when you look at the story from the side of the winner.  The Tapestry (embroidery) is on 70 “screens”, although it is hard to tell where one stops and starts, and you only get a bit of an indication by the numbering at the top of the sheet.

As well as the tapestry, there was also some very interesting exhibitions, which taught us that William struggled to take control of England, and had to introduce the Feudal system into England to keep the peasants under control.  They also did some really amazing stuff – built heaps of buildings that stand to this day (if not somewhat altered) – the Tower of London, Winchester Abbey, loads of other Cathedrals and things.  Also created the Doomsday book, which despite its sinister sounding name, is a record of land ownership in England from the time – a most rare and precious book for historians. Anyway, a great exhibition, well worth a look if you get the chance.

After that, we visited the Battle of Normandy Memorial Museum.  This was another fascinating depiction.  Each place puts a slightly different perspective on part of the conflict, and this Museum focused on the roles and attitudes of the Generals on both sides of the conflict.  It also had a really interesting section of General De Gaulle, what a visionary he was, how he took the lead of the French fight from London, even though he was sentenced to death for treason by the “official French Government”, how he gathered together a fighting force for France the fought in Africa, Italy, and the Finally in France for the liberation of their country.  Tying together the whole Bayeux theme, was the a film which ended with a quote from the Bayeux Memorial in British Cemetery just over the road from the Museum.  It is written in Latin along the top of the Memorial, and the translation reads, “We, once conquered by William, have now set free the Conqueror’s native land”

Week 3 – Thursday 18th July – Arromanches-Les_Bains

Another big day today – only one place to visit, but a couple of things to do.  The D-Day beaches from East to West go – Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.  Arromanches is to the West of Gold, so between the American and the British beaches.  Arromanches was the site of one of the most remarkable engineering feats of the war, designed by an Engineer called Major Alan Beckett. 

The Allies needed to get access to a port, but the Germans held them all, and they were all heavily fortified.  The idea was developed of building a port in the UK and towing it to Normandy – a distance of 100 miles over seas.  Now remember that this was a complete port, to be built in a matter of days – Dover had taken 7 years to build.  To do that, the Brits had to build a 5 mile sea wall in 70 metre lengths, 6 storeys high.  They had to build docks for ships of various sizes and tonnages to moor up to, those docks had to be far enough out in the harbour to be deep enough for the ships, and they needed access roads to get the trucks off the docks onto land. 

The sea wall was built, and then sunk around the South Coast of Britain, so the Germans wouldn’t be able to see it from the air.  The access roads were built and supported on floating pontoons, so that they woud go up and down with the tide.

When D-Day started, and the beaches were secure, the job began to build the harbour.  The submerged sea walls had to be refloated, and towed – 4 tugs per section  - over the hundred miles of sea to Arromanches, the same with the access roads to the docks – all 13 kms of them.  On the journey over, they lost 40% of these road.  When construction at Arromanches was to start, 60 old warships were sunk to build a protective wall so that the work could carry on with some protection.  Then the sea wall had to be put in place.  This was sunk out in the bay, so that only the tops of it were still visible to create the sea wall, then the docks, then the access roads.  Within 10 days, they had a functioning port.  Two of these were built, one at Arromanches, one at Omaha Beach.  Then disaster struck.  The Normandy Coast was hit by the worst summer storm it had seen in 60 years.  The Omaha Beach harbour was destroyed, but Arromanches survived, but with damage.

Anyway, they got the port fixed and working, and although they only expected it to be used for 3 months it was infact used for 8 months because of the destruction the Germans did to the ports as they were run out of town.  Of the 8 months, the port unloaded over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tonnes of supplies.  It is still upheld as one of the best examples of Military Engineering.

Today, there are still about two dozen of the 215 sections of the sea wall still in place and visible, as well as the floating pontoons that supported the access roads, and one of the dock sections.  The remainder of the sea wall was re-floated in 1944 and taken to Holland to form the basis of some of the dykes they were building.  The Museum D’embarquement commemorates the port, the ingenuity that went into creating it, and the dedication that was required to build it – there was a war going on just off the beach at the time, remember.

When we went through the museum, there was a boy’s school group there at the same time – intermediate age, I guess, and they were getting a guided tour of the working of how the port worked, which we were lucky enough to be able to listen in on.  We heard one of the teachers saying that this was the 7^th year they had run this trip.  The kids certainly seemed to be enjoying it, and were very attentive during the presentation, and then at the movie that we saw afterwards.

The other attraction at Arromanches is a 360 degree movie – you’ve got 9 screen that completely enclose the audience.  The audience stands so that they are able to look around at what is going on on the different screens.  It sounds like it would be impossible to watch, but it is actually done very well, so you never miss out on anything.  This was a very professional presentation, made by the director of a French TV series call Apocalypse which is about WWII.  This is probably the best thing we’ve seen on the whole trip.  The movie started with just one screen showing Hitler in full flight addressing one of his rallies, and progressed through the development of WWI, the German take over of various countries, the Allies offensives in Italy, then the D-Day landing, the 100 day Normandy war, all the way through to De Gaulle saluting the Allied soldiers as they did their liberation parade up the Champs Elysee – stirring stuff.  It finished with shots of Arramanches and France today  in colour to show what things were like now.

Dinner was a picnic  in the campground from cold cuts of meat and salmon, a terrine, cheese, bread and wine – a good end to the day.

Week 3 – Wednesday 17th July – Sainte Mere Eglise, Utah Beach

A big day today, with us heading to firstly Sainte Mere Eglise, one the first towns to be liberated by allied troops (US Para troop Division) on D-Day 1944.  The town itself claims to be the first, but we’ve read of other towns also claiming to be the first, so we’re sticking with one of the first.  The town is on the N13, the main route on the Normandy Peninsular, so it was imperative that the Allies got control of this route before the landings started to thwart any German counter-offensives.  The spire on the town’s church is also the spire that para trooper John Steele got his parachute caught on, and had to play dead for two hours before he was captured by the Germans.  Fortunately for him, he escaped, survived the war, and made a number of returns to France, always to a warm welcome.  To this day, a mannequin (him) hangs on the side of the church, with the parachute caught over the steeple.

Beside the church is the airborne museum, which commemorates the airborn assault the allies launched on the Germans.  It is a fantastic museum, and we learned so much about the German Occupation and how the allies got their invasion going.  In doing this tour, we’ve learned a lot more of the detail of the wars and how and where they were conducted.  Up until now, all I’ve really known is that the war was in Europe and went from 1939 until 1945, so I assumed that it was all going on, all over the place, all of that time.  With this trip, we’ve learned that in fact the Germans invaded and became an occupying force in many countries, and that the Allies ran specific offensives against parts of the German lines. 

After the Germans occupied France, but couldn’t defeat Britain, they spent several years building the Atlantic Wall, along the coast of Norway, Holland, Belgium and France – 700 miles, I think.   This was a massive undertaking (But what else are you going to do when you’ve got a bunch of soldiers sitting around getting bored, and a local population that you can do with what you will), and involved a series of pill boxes, gun emplacements, and beach barricades.  It was built by Rommel, and he firmly believed that if the Germans could not stop an Allied assault, at the beaches, they would lose the war.

The Museum goes through various means that the Allies got men and equipment onto French soil, and is particularly focused on the first hours of the invasion, when the paratroop divisions dropped in from the skies, and secured key positions to enable the beach landings, and from there the push from Normandy to Paris, and on to Berlin.  The Battle is refered to as the 100 days of Normandy.

War is an amazing logistical exercise, and I never knew that troops and equipment were delivered into Normandy in gliders, as well as by parachute.  The Gliders were towed from the UK, and then released over Normandy where they would find a place to land.  Rommel knew that this was coming, and had put large stakes into all the paddocks, to catch and destroy any planes that tried to land there.  As a result of this, many soldiers lost their lives being impaled as their planes landed.  To understand the gamble the allies were taking, Eisenhower was expecting losses of 50% of all the Allied Troops which were under his command, and his detractors were picking losses of up to 80%.  Eisenhower was right, but not in a way that anybody would ever want to be.

The Museum had many personal letters from soldiers and their families posted after the war, which was very moving, and as a result we spent a lot of time reading these letters, which isn’t something I would normally do in a museum.  One of the most memorable was the one from John Steele, posted in 1964, after he had attended the 20^th Anniversary thanking the local people for the warm reception he always received.  The Museum is a great exhibitor of the many acts of personal bravery and sacrifice that were made on the day, and ultimately led to the Allied Victory.

From there it was on to Saint Marie Du Monte, and Utah Beach.  There are 5 beaches involved in the D-Day Landings Utah, Omaha, Juno, Gold and Sword.  The first two are American, the last three British.  The British are named based on random selections from the Dictionary, which is good practice.  The Americans however named there after a couple of their states, for varying reasons, and those names seem to be the most famous.  Saint Marie Du Monte is the town inland from Utah Beach, which became the scene of one of the initial engagement of D-Day between the US Para Troopers and the German occupiers.  It is 5ks from Utah Beach.  On the road between Saint Marie Du Monte and Utah Beech is a newly erected monument to Richard Winters who was the commander of the 506^th US Infantry Regiment, upon which the TV Series Band of Brothers was based.  We had watched the series before we came on the holiday, as part of our study and preparation, so were keen to see the monument to one of the outstanding leaders of the D-Day invasion. 

Utah Beach has several monuments to various US Military groups who served and sacrificed their lives on D-Day.  In addition, there is the Utah Beach D-Day Museum, which recounts the events of D-Day, the landings that occurred at Utah Beach in the 5 months following D-Day, in order to provision the supplies needed to support and army that was about to take on and conquer Europe.  The Museum was created by the man who was Mayor of Saint Marie du Monte from 1949 to 1991.  He was around on D-Day, and was mistakenly shot by the Americans.  Given a transfusion, shipped off to the states for further treatment and recuperation, he then set about creating a museum in one of the old German bunkers to honour the men who came to liberate France and the rest of Europe from the Germans. 

Utah Beach was hugely important in terms of being a supply point for the Allied forces.  From June to November 1944, the Allies landed 836,000 men, 220,000 vehicles ranging from jeeps to locomotives and 725,000 tonnes of supplies at Utah Beach.   

After Utah Beach, we headed to Pointe du Hoc, one of the key German defensive positions, located on top of a cliff.  The US Rangers had to use rope ladders to scale the cliff, at the cost of many lives, find the Germans had scarpered, track them down, and destroy their guns.  When they were relieved from duty several days after D-Day, the original 225 soldiers now numbered only 90.

Today was an awesome day, but I have to say it is a totally different experience to the WWI sites we have visited.  For a start, the technology had moved on remarkably in just 20 years, but more importantly, the stories here are about the start of a victory.  What began on 6 June 1944, would result a year later in the total surrender of the German Army, and while the battles were brutal and the costs in human lives horrendous, the results were always a push towards the end.  The WWI sites, covered 4 years, where there was total stalemate, mere yards were gained or lost with the cost of thousands of lives, and the battle was constantly ebbing and flowing.  The conditions the soldiers had to endure during WWI must have been the worst that have had to be endured over a sustained period for so little gain.  The museums at the WWI sites were sombre memorials to a futile battle, whereas the museums we have seen so far are as well as an honouring of the fallen soldiers, also a testament to the extraordinary ingenuity of local people, soldiers, generals and military strategists to overcome almost insurmountable odds to achieve an outcome.  Both sets of museums are amazing in what they teach about a period in history, but both are also totally different in terms of the time and war they portray

Week 3 – Tuesday 16th July – Bayeux – Tapestry and D-Day

Well, we’ve moved on again.  An hour blast across the top of Normandy on their wonderful motorway system, and we are now settled into our next campground, where we are booked for the next 5 days. This is a much quieter country campground, with a restaurant on-site, and only   8ks from Bayeux.

Camping is a wonderful experience, if the weather is right.  If it’s not, we’ll be beating a path to a hotel, but while the weather is good, it is a great exercise in logistics and enjoying the great outdoors, even if you aren’t too far from the nearest toilet and shower, and there is a restaurant on site. The first night is a bit chaotic, as you sort out your life into various small compartments and assigned locations within the boot of the car, figure out what has to come with you in the car each day, and work out how you are going to arrange everything, so that you can go out, get the roof down, keep everything secure in the boot and out of sight, and then arrange your eating arrangements for those times when you don’t want to eat in a restaurant.  Once you’ve got it sussed out, living out of the boot of the car, and making the tent your home is a very rewarding and relaxing experience.  Apologies to anyone who has been expecting a “That is until……” moment – everything is going really well, and we are enjoying our second stint of camping.

Having arrived at our campground, chosen our tent site, let the tent erect itself, and attached it to the ground, we then headed into Bayeux to have a quick recon of the town.  Being famous for its tapestry is really all we knew about it, so we were pleasantly surprised at what a nice town it is, with a very up market main street and a very elaborate cathedral.

But today is a bit of a quiet day, so we’ve done the drive, set up camp, visited the town, had dinner at the restaurant at the camp ground, learnt what really bad French Rose is like (sweet and perfumed - yuk), and a bad French red, but are enjoying being camping again, and are looking forward to a big day on the D-Day beaches and museums tomorrow.

Week 3 – Monday 15th July –Small dogs and Angry Frogs

Is that your small dog I’m standing on, or are you just displeased to see me?  Small dogs are everywhere in France, and they go everywhere with their owners – most particularly they go to restaurants, where they lounge around looking bored, but usually sitting under their owners seats.  I say usually, because the one I encountered today, was not under its owner’s seat, and although I can not vouch that it didn’t move, I know that I certainly was, and the yelps of pain / ecstasy that suddenly emerged from under the table put me entirely in defensive mode, and I was left apologising profusely for stepping on the proud owner’s dog.  In future, I will know to have my game face on and to loudly proclaim “who left this small dog in this ridiculous position” in English or Australian, of course.

We have noticed an over abundance of a particularly ugly, pug dog type creature, with huge ears that we have nicknamed “chien du pays”, dog of the region, after the wine of the similar name.  We’ve seen several of these parked car chases positioned in restaurants and have been unfortunate enough to have them seated beside us in a couple of restaurants.  This of course obliges us to do the usual, “oh, isn’t he beautiful” type malarkey, but whatever it takes to keep the locals happy, I say.

Honfleur is a beautiful little town, and after the 14^th of July’s fireworks display, it is now looking a wee bit the worse for wear, but the town’s council staff are in full swing at 8am cleaning up the detritus from last nights festivities.  Anne and I went out early to look around the town, and take some photos while the light was good. 

Honfleur is a town of artists, yachties, and as I mentioned, small dogs.  I feel like k, k, k, ken from a fish called Wanda, as I’m  forever on the lookout for these hairy sneakers / hand bag fillers that people parade around with so proudly.  The Honfleur harbour is in fact a small off shoot off the Seine, so has no natural water flowing through it, although fish do chose to live in it.  It’s other main inhabitants are yachtsmen, who are put on this earth to provide entertainment for the restaurant goers, who are lucky enough to get to enjoy them manoeuvring their boats.  The harbour is trapped inside an elevating bridge, which is lifted every hour, on the half hour.  The boats stack themselves up 4 or 5 deep, then when somebody wants to leave through the channel under the bridge, everybody outside them has to move, so they can get out, then the people who aren’t leaving re-position themselves and the whole thing waits for the next hours bridge lifting.  With boats, skippers, wives, ropes, friends, children, dogs and cats, all involved in the manouvering process, there is limitless possibilities for things to go wrong, and for large and expensive yachts to be sent crashing into one another, so for the price of a small breakfast, you can be set up for the day amusing yourselves at other people’s misfortune.  That might sound a bit cynical, but some of the yachties comments indicated that it wasn’t just us land lubbers who were having a bit of a laugh.

Neighbors in the camp ground are just trying to shut up for the night.  38 hearty door slams later, I think everything is ship-shape.  There are teenagers, and potentially stressed parents involved, so I’m not sure who was involved in the ruckus, but it certainly makes for interesting living.

I’ve mentioned artists, and Honfleur has many very beautiful art galleries, which have some very exotic, and in some cases, some very beautiful and original art.  None of it is priced of course, so I’m working on the basis of “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it”. The people who work in the art galleries are very friendly however, and fully accepting of the fact that with what they are selling they might have to talk to 1,000 flunking before they find a real customer who wants to buy.  The great thing about the UK and Europe, is that you never can tell what that real customer may look like, so you have to be nice to them all.

Tomorrow, we are off to Bayeux, and back to camping which we are looking forward to.  WWII D-Day landing beaches, the Bayeux tapestry and more small French villages to wander through.  What fun.

End of Week 2 – Sunday 14 July – Honfleur and Bastille Day

!4^th of July, and Bastille Day – well apparently not, at least not to the French, who refer to it as the Fete National. Apparently, they are celebrating the 14^th of July 1790, which is the year after the storming of the Bastille.  In 1790, they had the Fete de la Federation, which was the celebration of the uprising of the modern nation and the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the first republic during the French Revolution.  So there.

We have now moved onto Normandy.  We had planned to have a night camping, but turned up to the campground to find it had a water slide, an overcrowded swimming pool, an overcrowded car park, and had all the appeal of Butlins on steroids, so we booked an extra night in the hotel that we had booked in Honfleur, and it was very lucky that we did too.

The trip over to Normandy was pretty quick, and only a couple of hours – you can cover a lot of distance on the French motorways, which you have to pay for, but the speed is nice, and so much easier to concentrate on, than chugging around at 70-90ks on the small back roads.  Also, if you’ve got any distance to cover, going through a small French town every couple of ks, and getting stuck behind campervans and trucks soon loses its appeal.  Our GPS this year is a more advanced model, which tells us what the streets are called and what the motorway signs say – well, that’s what it is trying to do, but in the last week we’d heard things like Brook Sellers and Por-e, so we knew the pronunciation was either very French, or a little misguided – Brook Sellers was of course Brussels, and Por-e, Paris – of course!

We’d booked into a Best Western in Honfleur, because it met all our criteria – in the historical centre, not a big hotel, character, and in the right price range.  What we didn’t know, was that there was a massive fireworks display planned for July 14, that our Hotel was right on the edge of the harbour, and the fireworks would all be going off from about 100m away from our hotel, and that our room looked right out over the whole show.  When we arrived into the town, we had to crawl along the road to find the hotel – there were people everywhere. What should have taken two minutes took half an hour, and it was a beautiful hot day – 28 degrees – really nice.  There were thousands of people in the town, particularly for the celebrations, and all the restaurants around the Marina were full of people, there were performers keeping the crowds happy, people were letting off firecrackers – really big ones – all round the place, kids were there on their noisy motorbikes, it was just crazy, but lots of fun.  

The fireworks went off about 11:00, then there was a bit of a disco, more fire crackers, people tooting cars, partying all that stuff, so it was a cool night. 

Week 2 – Saturday 13 July – Albert, Villers Bretoneux and Amiens

Brrrr – 8 degrees this morning – A bit of a rude awakening from our first night’s camping.  Never mind, we both got a good night’s sleep, and the temperature will improve during the day as the mist burns off.  On the plus side, the camp ground takes orders for pain au raisin and pain au chocolate, so irrespective of the coldness of the weather, we get some yummy food to start the day.  Camp ground showers are always both a lottery and a challenge.  A lottery in terms of what the set up will be – how big will the cubicle be, will you have to pay for the showers, will they be on timers, will they be hot – a challenge in terms of organising your towel, toilet bag, clothes valuables in such a manner, that you end up clean, and they end up dry. All part of the challenge, and first days are always the biggest challenge.

My computer is on the downward slope.  When we left for our holiday, the 5 key started going on the blink, so you had to give it a good snappy thump to get a 5 out of it (working well tonight BTW).  Last night, the 5 problem had extended to the ‘i’ key, and periodically the space key, and tonight, everything is working fine, except the ‘y’ key.  C’est La Vie – such are the joys of technology.  Again, on the plus side, the capability of GPS does make tripping round a breeze.  We went in search of a Laundromat last night.  Actually, the search was on Google – Amiens Laundromat’s – 4 were presented, Google Maps enabled me to determine which was closest, type its address into the GPS, get there, get the job done, then type in another address to the supermarket, get there, buy dinner, type in another address back to the campground, unpack the washing, eat the dinner, all without any stress or drama.  When we started out doing these European holidays, any of those activities would have been a major undertaking, and quite stressful for both the driver and the navigator.  Ahhhh, technology, where would we be with out it.

Today we visited Albert, and it’s awesome 1916 Somme Museum.  The reason it was awesome, was that it took two different views of WWI – one a very high level view, and one a very personal view.  The high level view was in describing the events in Europe that led to the war, how at a high level the war progressed, how all the powers viewed that it would be a quick battle that would “be over before Christmas”, the view of the populations in supporting “King and Country” and how everybody was up for a great adventure.  At a personal level, it went into the life of the Tommy’s in the trenches, what equipment they carried, what they did day in, and day out, letters and food from home, etc.  The museum itself is in the underground tunnels that were used as air raid shelters in WWII, and show a perspective of life underground for the soldiers in WWI, because as well as the trenches, the British built underground tunnels where the soldiers lived, made operational and strategic decisions, operated hospitals etc.  From our perspective, the museum had the best high level over view of how WWI evolved.  The other museums were very focused on what was happening in their particular part of the war, whereas this one gave a really good high level picture.

After Albert, it was short drive to Villeurs-Brettoneux, where the Australians have their WWI memorial.  I’ve probably posted enough photos of WWI grave sites, monuments and memorials, but the Australian one was very impressive.  The Monument allows you to climb to the top, to get an overall view of the area that was being protected around Villeurs Bretoneux, and there were some very moving citations regarding Australia’s unknown soldier.

For lunch we headed back into Amiens, as we wanted to see this before we closed off our WWI pilgrimage.  The highlight of the town in its cathedral, which we went inside.  Architecturally, it is very impressive, and the stained glass windows are something to behold. To top it all off, there are two plaques commemorating the sacrifices the New Zealand and Australian servicemen made in the Battle of the Somme. 

That concludes our visit to the WWI battle sites, and we’ve had a fantastic time doing it.  The whole experience has given us a much greater understanding of the events that led up to the conflict, the mood of the various nations (including ours) that participated, how fickle and in many respects unnecessary it all was, but most importantly what the ordinary people went through and sacrificed in order to uphold the values of freedom and democracy that we hold so dear, even when those in power seemed to be doing all they could to destroy those things.  They haven’t been forgotten, and their sacrifice wasn’t in vain – we will always appreciate it.

Week 2 – Friday 12 July – Le Cariere Wellington and on to Amiens

As I mentioned yesterday, we are visiting the Le Cariere Wellington this morning.  We’ve just found out that it can get very busy, and we might not be able to go on a tour, if there are bus trips.  In order to offset this, we got down there at opening time at 10am (this is France, of course), and low and behold, the only other people there were 6 other kiwis.  They were all retirees, who for some reason or other had some connection with Dunedin, so that was a bit of a coincidence.  They had watched the 10 minute video about the battle of Arras before we arrived.  They must have heard the same thing that we had, as we arrived on the dot of 10am, and they were already inside when we got there.

The entrance to the quarry exhibition has a large accolade to the work of the New Zealanders, and the whole presentation focused on the work the kiwis had done – it made you feel quite awestruck and very proud.  By the time WWI started, there were already quarry’s under Arras from the extensive mining of stone that had occurred up until the end of the 19^th Century.  The quarries, were however just point digs, and the New Zealand miners dug a further 12 miles (20 Kms) of trenches in just 6 months, that were used to keep the soldiers in safe (but let’s not call it comfortable) accommodation and to escort them secretly to just in front of the German positions, in the township of Arras, at the start of the battle.  The plan worked brilliantly at the start, but an unfortunate decision to delay any further push forward after the first day gave the Germans time to bring up reinforcements.  This along with a poor showing from the French, who were supposed to be the main event in the battle meant that the initiative was called off when casualties hit 4,000 per day.  One of the German generals later commented that their army was all at 6’s and 7’s because of the surprise attack, and had the decision been made not to delay, it could have changed the whole outlook of the war.

The quarry tour takes you down in a lift to a depth of 20 metres below the surface of the earth, to the tunnels that the New Zealand tunnelers had dug in 6 months.  The tunnels were very impressive, for not only did they accommodate soldiers and escort them secretly and safely to the front, they also had running water, electricity, kitchens, latrines, a light railway, and a fully equipped hospital.  The tunnels accommodated 20,000 men for 8 days in the lead up to the 1917 battle of Arras.  The work of building the tunnels was very dangerous, as the Germans were undertaking counter tunnelling initiatives, and in the period of building the tunnels, 41 tunnelers lost their lives and 151 were injured, out of a total workforce of 500 men.

The tour is conducted in small groups, of which there were 12 in ours.  We had a French guide who was very knowledgeable, and very complimentary about the work of the New Zealanders.  There were videos, and we were all decked out with an audio guide as well, so it was a very well run informative tour.

After the tour, we hit the road towards Bapaume, the sight of another major WWI battle, and then went on to Longueval, which has both a New Zealand Monument beside it, as well as the Catepillar Valley Cemetery.  Catepillar Valley is where the body of New Zealand’s unknown soldier was exhumed from a couple of years ago, and now lies in the Cenotaph in Wellington.  They were both very worthwhile visits, and the Monument is set in a very beautiful setting, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but somewhere that from a military perspective was very important – on the top of a hill. 

After that, the fun started, because tonight is our first night of camping.  We go the tent erected no problems – it is self erecting, but then there was the airbed.  Our pump would be brilliant, if it didn’t have European only plugs, and only run on battery, which takes 6 hours to charge, which we didn’t learn until we needed to pump up the airbed.  Anyway, a few red cheeks later, the airbed was all pumped up, and we have now had a very nice picnic dinner in our new chairs, on our new table, with a nice bottle of rose, so everything is good.  We are here in Amiens for two nights, visiting Albert, and Villers Bretoneux tomorrow.

Week 2 – Thursday 11 July – Le Quesnoy and Arras

Time to leave Ypres, and head to Arras, which is only about an hour down the road, but a couple of important diversions are needed before we get there.

First up, we headed back to Mesen, to the Church in the town, where there is a plaque commemorating Samuel Frickleton, one of our Victoria Cross winners.  Mesen is a sister city to Featherson, so beside the plaque, there is a map of New Zealand, with Featherston highlighted.  Anne had her photo taken standing over Wellington.

From there it was off to Le Quesnoy, the scene of the last full scale involvement from the NZ troops in WWI.  Quite a mission it was too, and one that the locals are eternally grateful for the way it was carried out.  The Germans had held Le Quesnoy for most of the war, and at the very end of the war, the New Zealanders managed to secure the town by scaling ladders up the ramparts, take the Germans by surprise, and take them prisoners without the usual approach of laying the town flat.  Now there are streets, a square, and the New Zealand Souvenir Gardens which contains the monument commemorating the New Zealand Division liberating their city.  

Anyway, roll forward to more modern times, and Todd Blackadder laid a wreath there while the All Blacks were on their end of year tour in 2000, so now there is a Place All Blacks, as well as the other local spots named in New Zealand’s honour.

2013, and we are there to visit the New Zealand Memorial, which is to be found at the far end of the town square.  You walk around the back of the town ramparts for a couple of hundred metres until you come to the arched gate to the gardens.  Going inside, there is a large memorial plaque on one of the town ramparts honouring the valour of the New Zealand Division. The plaque has a picture depicting the kiwi soldiers going up the ladders over the ramparts, with their pistols and rifles at the ready, being watched over by an angel. 

There were several groups of people visiting the monument, and none of the other groups were kiwis, so that was quite heart warming.  The coffee in the square should have come with a warning from the surgeon general, because, although I’m sure no cows were hurt in the making of the coffee, they certainly gave they’re all to produce enough wipped cream to provide the topping for the coffee.

From Le Quesnoy, we drove to Arras, where we are staying for one night.  The highlight for us in Arras, is Le Cariere Wellington – the Wellington Quarry that was dug by New Zealand miners in preparation for the 1917 Battle of Arras.  We will be visiting that tomorrow.  Arras as a town, has a lovely looking cathedral, and two rather nice squares.   I say rather nice, because they’re all in some need of repair, so look more than just a bit run down.  Nonetheless, we had a nice meal that night in one of the restaurants close to the town square.

Week 2 – Wednesday 10 July – Other Countries Memorials

Today we headed off on a slightly different tack, to see some of the memorials that are maintained by other countries around Ypres.  The ones we had seen so far, are all for countries that were fighting with the British for the Allies cause, but of course, there were other countries on the Allies side, and of course, there was also the other side.

The British made the decision that in death, all soldiers would be treated as equals, so if they couldn’t repatriate all their war dead, then they would not repatriate any of them.  New Zealand followed suit in this.  In support of this, and out of gratitude for what the allies did, the Belgians had gifted in perpetuity the land that the war memorials, monuments and cemeteries are located on.  Other countries took different approaches – the French for example allowed for their servicemen to be bought back to France to be buried.

In order to understand what the other countries had done for their war dead, we decided that we would visit the French and German cemeteries.  Firstly, however, we visited Irish Farm Cemetery, which despite it’s name is not full of Irish soldiers, but was farmed by an Irish family before the war.  This grave is one of the largest allied cemeteries, and there are 23 kiwi soldiers buried there.  Unlike yesterday’s cemeteries, this one was very tightly packed, however, being a commonwealth cemetery, it was beautifully laid out and kept in pristine condition.

Next up was the German Cemetery.  This one was totally different.  It had really only come together in about the 1950’s when a number of German cemeteries were consolidated into a small number of much larger ones.  Here, the headstones are laid out flat, and each head stone contains about 16 – 20 names.  There are some large upright stone slabs that have a steel plate with the names of the dead who have never been found.   It was a very austere environment, not overly well maintained and really very down, compared to the bright and pristine cemeteries we’d seen in the previous days.  There was a bus load of English school kids there when we arrived, and I heard one of the teachers saying that it was important that the kids understood what had happened, and more importantly why it had all started, because 100 years on, many of those same conditions that had lead to the World Wars, are now starting to become more prevalent in Europe now.  The Entrance to the cemetery is a 25 metre long black tunnel that had 4 video screens, that had English translations of what was going on.  The commentary was about what the soldiers went through, not why they were there, but atleast it had English translations.  At the end of the last screen, the video ended with the instruction “Now go and visit the Cemetery”, which made both of us laugh, because it seemed very Germanic in its delivery.

Finally in the morning, was the French cemetery.  The French used crosses instead of head stones, didn’t have any English translations, and was pretty scruffy, so we got to the gate, took a photo and left.  (BTW, I’m writing this in the square in Arras, France, and the French are being their usual charming and helpful selves – no seriously, we always find them wonderful – so we’re more in favour of them today).

In the afternoon, we spent about 3 hours in In Flanders Fields Museum, which is the building you can see in the comparative photos of Ypres.  It is a magnificent building, and the time at the museum just flew by.  The presentation is very multi-media, with videos depicting the war scenes, videos of individuals acting a role and describing their role in the war – a French, a British, a German and a Belgian soldier, talking about their Christmas Eve, and how they all came together in no mans land, a chaplain talking about using the church as a hospital, a surgeon, a nurse and a sister talking about the patients, both as a group, and as individuals.  It was a very effective presentation.  

There were also lots of static displays, and large wooden story boards telling how the war developed, ebbed and flowed around Ypres.  The whole message of the museum was what a tragic waste the whole thing was.  As we were leaving, there was a whole series of banners stretching across the entire width of the building that listed the conflicts that had occurred since WWI.  It was like saying, “you’ve been through here, you’ve learned about the war, you’ve seen it’s cost in terms of deaths, shattered lives of the survivors, the destruction of an entire areas, towns and countrysides, and you’ve learnt how important it is that this never happens again, but guess what, the people who need to learn, the world and national leaders don’t and consistently put their populations through these senseless losses of lives”.

Week 2 – Tuesday 9 July – WWI Memorials

Another big day today, buzzing round the country side looking at war memorials of significance to New Zealanders, and a couple of others, just for good measure along the way.

First stop was the New Zealand Monument in Mesen.  The Monument is a large obelisk that honours the men of the New Zealand Division in the battle of Messines on the 7^th to 14^th June 1917.  This battle was launched after the explosion of the 19 mines mentioned in yesterday’s blog.  The monument, does not list any names of the dead or missing, but acknowledges the work of the kiwis in achieving the objectives of their mission in re-capturing the town of Messines, in conjunction with British and Australian soldiers.  I made a bit of a clown of myself by telling Anne that we couldn’t park in what she thought was the Monument car park, because it was reserved for Stan’s Auto Hire’s.  The photo is in the blog, and when you look at it, you’ll realise what my mistake was.

After that it was round the corner to the Messines Ridge (New Zealand) Memorial which is located at the entrance way to the Messines Ridge British Cemetery.  The Memorial, is a large cross, that has the names of the New Zealanders whose grave is not known engraved on the base that the cross sits on.  The cemetery itself also contains graves of New Zealand soldiers who were killed in the battle.

Heading back towards Ypres, we saw another large cemetery, which looked like it was nicely laid out so we stopped at what turned out to be the Bedford House Cemetery.  Bedford House, was a building on the site that was originally called Kasteel Rosendaal, but as was the way at the time, was gradually renamed by the allied forces.  The house was destroyed during the war, but the name stuck for the cemetery that followed in it’s footsteps.  The cemetery was very beautiful, with ponds and avenues of trees.

After lunch we went to somewhere quite different – Polygon Wood Cemetery.  I had noted it down as somewhere to visit, but between my research and actually getting there, couldn’t quite remember why we were there.  This cemetery was tiny, a much smaller number of graves than we’d experienced so far, and unlike the neatly ordered, and architecturally designed places we’d experienced , this was quite random, with small groups of headstones in a line, but then other headstones at odd angles, some hard up against the wall of the cemetery.  This was obviously a cemetery that had been established by men burying their mates at the time of battle, having to deal with bombardment, sniper fire, mud and carnage.  As we entered into the cemetery and started looking at the headstones, one after another had the silver fern logo to signify that this was a New Zealand grave.  Of the 107 graves in the cemetery, 60 of them belong to New Zealanders.  It was a very eerie feeling wandering around the cemetery because of it’s informal layout, and the fact that so many of the bodies there were New Zealanders.

The final stop for the day was just over the road from Polygon Wood, at the Buttes New British Cemetery at Polygon Wood, which contains both a New Zealand Memorial, and a Memorial to the 5^th Australian Division.  The New Zealand Memorial contains the names of 378 missing soldiers, and the cemetery itself contains 96 graves of known kiwi soldiers and 67 graves of unknown kiwi soldiers.  The Memorial had a wreath from the Government and people of New Zealand.

One of the things that struck us was that despite the thousands of people we’d seen the night before at the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate, there was nobody at the cemeteries and memorials, and we were the only people at each of the places we visited.  We were glad that we’d watched a number of WWI movies before we came on the holiday to set the scene of what the whole conflict had been about and what the conditions were like during the war.  It’s certainly a different place today, and the movies were a great way of showing what millions of shells can do to a landscape along with the rain that is fairly common in these parts.  Not too much of the war was fought in the pleasant high 20’s temperatures that we have been enjoying.

The day was rounded out with drinks and then dinner in the square.

Week 2 – Monday 8 July – Ypres and WWI Memorials

Today we bid farewell to Bruges.  We have 4 days here and walked our feet off all round the town and up and down the Belfry.  Our guide book took us on 2 long walking tours – 1 through the main Bruges tourist sites, amongst what felt like a million other tourists, the other to the more out of the way parts of Bruges, beside the large outer canals, past windmills and through some quaint little back streets.  To sustain ourselves, we’ve eaten some wonderful meals and have really enjoyed the Hotel Aragon, which is about a 5 minute walk from the main square.

As we headed out of Bruges in the car, we were reminded how low the low countries are – The GPS told us we were at 10m altitude, and on the trip down to Ypres, we saw it get as high as 30m at one stage.  This was better than in Holland, when it read -10m for a considerable period of time.  In Ypres, where we are heading to, they name the hills by their height above sea level – Hill 60 and Hill 62 (Mount Victoria by comparison is 196m).

The weather came right a couple of days ago, and as we cruised down the roads to Ypres, the temperature was a delightful 34 degrees Celsius – with a nice cooling breeze from having the roof down.

Our first stop was at Roeselare for a Decathlon store – a favourite of ours – Europe’s sporting mega store extraordinaire, and to be found in larger towns in France, and obviously Belgium.  On the purchase radar were an air bed, a pump (electric of course), 2 chairs, a small table, a torch, and two pillows – to complete our camping setup, the rest of which we’d bought from New Zealand with us.

Our destination for the next 3 nights is Ypres, home to the Menin Gate and the centre of all things World War I, in this part of the world.  We got interested in Europe’s war memorials in 2009, when we ended up in Verdun, and then learnt that it was the site of one of WWI’s bloodiest, longest and toughest battles.  I wrote about the battle at Verdun in my previous blog, and the basis for this holiday was formed from that visit. 

http://david-anne-france-2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/thursday-9th-july-week-4-verdun.html

We had marked out the key towns of interest from WWI, and northern most and on the road between Bruges and Ypres was Passchendaele, the scene of the worst disaster in New Zealand’s military history, in terms of lives lost in a single day with 5,000 dead, missing or wounded.  When we arrived in Passchendaele, it is about as insignificant a town as one could imagine.  The highlight was the town map that showed that Tyne Cot Cemetery and visitor centre was only a few Ks down the road, and this was the start of our WWI journey. 

Tyne Cot is the largest British war cemetery in the world containing 11,956 commonwealth war dead and 4 Germans.  8,369 of the graves are unknown.  The name Tyne Cot was given by the Northumberland Fusiliers, who thought that the German pill boxes looked like typical cottages from the banks of the River Tyne in their native country.  This naming convention, of a British “slang” name becoming the official name, is repeated at numerous places throughout the area.

As we walked up the path to the visitor centre, a woman’s voice could be heard solemnly reading out the names and ages of fallen soldiers.  As we entered the visitor centre, the woman’s voice was synced with a screen showing the photo, rank and regiment of the soldiers.  The visitor centre is very modern and contained some interesting information about NZ’s contribution to the war.

The population of New Zealand in 1914 was just over 1m people.  120,000 soldiers enlisted for WWI of which 103,000 served overseas.  More than 18,000 New Zealanders were killed in WWI, 12,500 of them in France and Belgium.  Nearly 50,000 others were wounded.  More than 4,600 servicemen are buried or commemorated in some 80 cemeteries in Belgium.

Some of the overall facts of the various campaigns, are also quite horrendous.  From the 16^th July 1917, the British forces fired 4.2 million shells at German Positions.  In 100 days, they gained just 8 kilometres at a cost of 245,000 British soldiers dead, wounded or missing and 215,000 German ones.  I read later that gain was later conceded in a single day in 1918. 

I guess that was the thing that is really driven home in the places we are visiting – this wasn’t a campaign where the Germans got to a certain point, then there was a stalemate for several years, then they were sent packing.  This war ebbed and flowed – even over a single day.  Some of the stories were of a group of soldiers making a significant breakthrough, at a large cost in lives, only to become stranded and be turned round and sent packing with a similar loss of life, sometimes on the same day, sometimes only a few days later.

One of the most poignant things in the visitor centre are two photos of the area before and after WWI.  Before, there are towns, fields and roads.  Afterwards, there is just a flattened earth, there is nothing of it left.  I’ve posted up 3 photo of Ypres that are in a similar vein – taken in 1911, 1919 and 2011 – before WWI, straight after it, and now.  At the end of the war, the British were keen to leave Ypres in ruins, as a stark reminder of what the war was like, however, the locals who had other ideas, won the day.

From the visitor centre, we exited out onto the cemetery grounds.  All the British Commonwealth war cemeteries, monuments and memorials are administered and maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission – www.cwgc.org, (funded by you and me, but I don’t begrudge it a bit) and all the sites are kept in pristine condition.   Prior to WWI, there had never been individual war graves, but the need for this type of memorial was recognised even before the war was over. 

The Tyne Cot Cemetery is in a beautiful location, in a slightly elevated location (remember everything here is dead flat), with great views of the surrounding countryside.  It is out in the countryside, so is generally very peaceful and quiet, although there was a sign apologising for the noise of the maintenance work in the entrance way.  The headstones are arranged in neat rows, with as much identification as is possible based on the remains that were retrieved.  For some headstones, this means that there is the name, rank, age, regiment and nationality of the soldier.  There is also a circular emblem when the nationality of regiment has one.  For the New Zealand headstones, there is a silver fern in the top half of the circle, with the words New Zealand underneath it.  For others there is just a headstone, with a cross, with the words “Known Unto God” at the bottom of the headstone, where it was not possible to identify anything about the body.

The semi-circular wall at the back of the cemetery at Tyne Cot is their memorial to the missing.  It holds the names of 34,957 soldiers who have no known grave, and who all died after 15 August 1917.  Their names could not be added to the Menin Gate Memorial because there was no space available on it.  Tyne Cot is one of the places that has a memorial to New Zealand’s fallen soldiers, where their bodies were never found.  There are two Rotundas at either end of the curved wall, with the New Zealand Memorial in the centre of the wall.  There, the names of 1,116 are listed, by order of rank within regiment.  Seeing the glowing references to the New Zealanders efforts in Passchendaele and the memorial to our fallen soldiers was a very humbling and moving experience.

Next stop was at Zonnebeke – just down the road from Tyne Cot and the location for the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917.  This Museum was well worth the couple of hours we spent there.     There were displays discussing the introduction of chemical warfare, flame throwers, mine warfare, both shallow and deep.  The first section was in chronological order and showed what happened in each year, what of the above “technologies” were introduced and where, and what the objectives were. 

The deep tunnelling warfare sounded really interesting / scary.  Both sides were doing it, so sometimes they’d break into each other’s tunnels, at which point the put in a charge on blow it up –bad luck if someone happened to be in there.  On 7 June 1917, they blew up 19 mines with over a million pounds of explosives.  4 of their mines didn’t explode, although 1 later did in 1955 after a heavy thunderstorm.

The second section of the Museum was 20 feet underground, and contained a mock-up of the bunkers that were used for medical procedures, accommodation, and strategizing.  It seemed a very real recreation, and with the flickering lights, constant noise of explosions was a fascinating insight into what life would have been like in the bunkers.

From Zonnebeke, we headed to Ypres to check into our hotel.  Ypres is another beautiful Belgian town.  The Menin Gate leads you into the town, and 200m down the road is the beautiful town square.  Each night, the last post is played at 8pm, and is one of the major events in the town.  We decided we’d go along on our first night, and were expecting a couple of hundred people and a fairly low key affair.  I was not expecting the couple of thousand people that were crammed in under the Menin Gate that started gathering from 7pm onwards.  The ceremony itself takes about 15 minutes, and tonight, there was a platoon of Fire and Rescue Services Officers from Oxfordshire, and a group from Canada.  As well, there were other groups laying wreaths.  I’m not sure how it works, but there were schools as well as families laying wreaths, and there is a program of who will be part of the ceremony each night.

The day concluded with a beautiful meal in the square, at a lovely restaurant, that I suspect we might be back to every night while we are here.