0500: Met with Mum and Dad at Paris Charles De Gaulle Aeroport after my train journey from The Hague and their flight from Sydney. Discovered hire car DOES NOT HAVE GPS. Will have to rely on the dubious navigational aptitudes of M and D. This being there 4th visit to the Somme and Normandy, finding our way should be reasonably straightforward. M assures us ‘Dont worry I have a map’.
0600: Or was that ‘Worry, I have a map’. M and D have a slapstick repartee going on that somewhat hampers progress.
D: You said that way
M: I said NOT that way
D: OK, well what am I doing here?
M: When you get up here, go left (signals to the right with her hand)
D: Which way?
M: Just do another lap of the roundabout...Go round again, I’m thinking... Take this exit...No, not this one, that one. Yes. No. Yes. This isn’t right. Do a U-turn...Actually, that was the right road. Just go round the roundabout again.
Horrifyingly, this is just the beginning.
Wednesday 15/9
9am: Stayed last night at motel in Roye. Enjoyed impromptu musical interlude by M and D. Without even being awake, M had a resonant nasal bass going and D shook the house with a trumpet solo with his fine snout. True snoring virtuosos.
The Australian National Memorial at Vill-Bret has 770 Australian graves including D’s mother’s sister’s first husband. Miraculously M and D locate the grave and plant an Australian flag into the soil. The memorial site is impressive. Identical white headstones stand to attention in line formation all over the immaculate green lawn. A lofty white tower overlooks the cemetery and joins two pavilions with walls covered in names of missing soldiers.
To the glory of God and in memory of the Australian Imperial Force in France and Flanders 1916–1918 and of eleven thousand who fell in France and have no known grave.We also visit the Thiepval Franco-British Memorial, an imposing monument that can be seen from kay's away - 45 metres high and on the top of a hill. Over 70 000 names of missing British and South African's are inscribed on it's pillars.
Driving all over the Somme area (which we did courtesy of M and D’s navigational style), I site numerous huge cemeteries and memorials testament to the enormous amount of killing and dying that occurred here.
In Albert, under the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Brebières is the Somme 1916 Museum set into a 230 metre underground air-raid shelter with exhibitions on trench life including sound effects, stuffed rats and creepy mannequins in military uniforms.
M and D also take me to the Lochnagar Crater which is a massive crater in an open paddock, formed by a huge explosion at the beginnings of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916. D tells me it’s 90 metres across and 30 metres deep.
11pm: We made it to Ypres at 7:30pm in time to partially digest burgers and frites before the 8pm Last Post at the Menin Gate. M hides the the paper cones of frites in her handbag where we join hundreds of others of various nationalities under the Menin gate for this daily remembrance with the road closed to traffic by the police, the local fire brigade band buglers sounding the Last Post and children and adults laying red poppy wreaths. This gate is a monumental arch and it’s passage is a cenotaph that honours the soldiers who went Missing in the Ypres salient of WW1, who have no known graves. Hundreds come here every day of the year at 8pm to remember. And yet there are still wars.
It’s dark after the ceremony in Ypres but a military bookshop is still open. M finds something she wants to buy but D has wandered halfway up the street with the “money bag”, a brown shoulder slash bum bag bought from Avon at least 20 years ago filled with all M and D’s cash (various currencies sharing the pouch). M screams up the shadowy street “Doug, have you got the money bag”. Of course potential muggers would now have no inkling that the bag contained anything of value.
Thursday 16/9
10am : Last night we stayed in a Formula 1 motel with SHARED BATHROOM. Wedged into the top bunk, I had to hold my bladder all night. When I turn the shower on it runs for 15 seconds then nothing. M and D have handwashed their underpants and placed them in the back window of the hire car to dry as we drive along. It’s embarrassing.
10pm: Spent the day in Ypres (Ieper) in Flanders, Belgium, the centre of battles between the German and the Allied forces after the German’s invaded in 1914,. Trenches had been dug to form an arch around Ypres creating the Ypres Salient. Almost half a million people died in the trenches and in No Man's Land around Ypres and the town was completely flattened. After the war, the town was rebuilt as close to the original structures as possible. We visited the old Cloth Hall which now houses the In Flanders Fields Museum, concentrating on Ypres's role in the First World War. This was an excellent museum with film, poetry, audiovisual displays, wall quotations, photographs and art. I remembered the WW1 poet Wilfred Owen that I studied in high school.
At the Tynecot Cemetry in Ypres, there is an abrupt downpour but M and D valiantly take another flag to put on the grave of a relative of Aunty Gloria’s.
In the evening we eat at Leon Restuarant , a Belgian chain mussels restaurant. After polishing off a plate of mussels (moules), I am offered another plate for only €1 more (resisted) and after ordering coffee we are encouraged to upsize to a Belgian dessert plate and coffee for another €1.20 (conceded). Oh, and there are unlimited frites. D thinks it’s great value.
Friday 17/9
10am: Last night we bedded down in one of the comparatively luxurious Hotel Premiere Classe chain. Our berth has portholes (?), a shower and a flushing toilet- how indulgent! I am still holding my bladder overnight in the top bunk because I’m not used to scaling ladders half asleep.
9pm: We visited the beautiful gothic Cathedral of Amiens, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Inside is the reputed severed head of John the Baptist housed in a reliquary. The beautiful art inside the church includes a 17th century sculpture of a weeping angel.
We also visited Sainte-Catherine church in Honfleur, built in the 15th and 16th centuries, which is the largest church made out of wood in France. Honfleur is a charming old port town on the Seine and so the church was built out of wood using boat building methods. In fact the ceiling of the nave has the appearance of two upturned boats.
Saturday 18/9
8am: Last night we had dinner in a nice restaurant in Bayeaux- onion soup, oysters, fish terrine, salmon, crème brulee, crepes. Then it was another Hotel Premiere Classe EXPERIENCE. M and D’s nasally night orchestra continues. We are up early today to visit the Bayeux Tapestry, before seeing the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy then will drive onto the cottage in Dordogne.
1pm: We walked the length of the Bayeux Tapestry displayed in the in the old Grand Seminary which is nearly seventy metres long and fifty centimetres high. Thought to be finished in 1077, it tells the story of the Norman Conquest of England, how William the Bastard became William the Conqueror, including the Battle of Hastings. There are nearly 50 scenes with human figures, ships and horses that have a naive effect without perspective. It is like a comic strip without speech balloons. In fact it’s not actually a tapestry but an embroidery on linen with vegetable dyed wool threads. It’s very elaborate.
4pm: On to Arromanches, where an artificial harbour codenamed Mulberry harbour was constructed by the Allies during WW2 to offload cargo for the beach invasion called Operation Overlord of 6 June 1944. Known as the D-Day landings, this was the largest amphibious invasion of all time. Remnants of this harbour are still in place and wrecked on the sand. Lots of lives were lost in this battle. The Germans were defeated and lost their position in most of France.
We walked along the grassy cliff tops at Longues-sur-Mer where the Germans had large concrete bunkers, still in place with the original rusty 152mm guns.
5pm: Sitting in the backseat while D drives and M navigates. Have been driving since 2pm. ETA to cottage in the Dordogne to meet Fiona, Gerry and kids is one hour. I ask for a toilet stop, don’t think I can wait an hour.
8pm: Had a toilet stop at 6pm, still driving. It’s a bit further than we expected and Laurel and Hardy keep making wrong turns. Maybe another hour till we get there.
9pm: D says just a bit further. Feeling dizzy. Maybe because we are going round in circles.
10pm: F has texted us to ask if we need directions. M and D say we are just 5 minutes away so no point replying to text.
11pm: M says these French people don’t know how to make maps and D says they don’t put enough signs in this country. M says the sign makers are stupid because the road names keep changing. But they assure me it’s 5 minutes away.
12am: Pretty sure we’ll be sleeping in the car tonight. M is not even reading the map now, just making random guesses. Dad is reversing around roundabouts and saying ‘Geez’ a lot. I start to laugh hysterically.
12:45am: It’s nearly 1am. We are outside a gate on a property that could be it. F is finally texted. We are in the right place. F and G have stayed up waiting for us. After 13 hours of sitting in the backseat I am buggered.
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