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”.