Loading...
Start a new Travel Blog! Blogabond Home Maps People Photos My Stuff

Paying our respects

a travel blog by rickandsuejohnson

Sue and I have always thought of ourselves as fortunate that in the death and destruction of WW1, our 4 Grandfathers emerged if not unscathed, at least alive. Recent family research has revealed a Great Uncle of Rick's who did not come home. We have long felt that we should pay our respects to the memory of what our Grandfathers did for us and our recent discovery has given it added poignancy.
view all 113 photos for this trip

Show Oldest First
Show Newest First

Vimy Ridge and a search for an ace

Vimy, France


Memorial on the ridge
Being a public holiday we decided not to go the quickest way via the autoroute to Vimy but took the back roads passing several monuments on the D947 from Estaires to the Lens by pass – the Indian Memorial at La Bombe followed quickly by the Portuguese Military Cemetery. Heading south as the A21 then A211 become the N17 you pass Avoin and as the road curves round to the right you get your first sight of the two gleaming white pillars on the ridge from the road. At Vimy-Givenchy-en-Gohelle you start your climb to the summit and the huge memorial park, gifted by the people of France in perpetuity to Canada.

Canadian memorial
The monument itself has, in the last few years, been completely renovated. The statues were removed (they are in sections) and cleaned and many of the stones that form the base and rise by a steps to the pillars were replaced by the nearest that could be found that matched the original and were of suitable quality from Croatia. The base is carved with the names of the 11,285 officers and men who died in France and have no known graves.

Bronze map of lines
To the right and back from the monument is a bronze plaque showing the Canadian and German lines prior to the battle at Vimy Ridge on 19 April 1917. Driving a half a mile or so to the east of the monument on a road through the park with the pine woods either side, cordoned off with warnings of danger (unexploded mines), you reach another car park with access to the Welcome Centre and sections of the trenches and tunnels which can be visited.


Preserved trenches
The Centre is staffed by young Canadians and our guide a young student from Winnepeg, Manitoba took us through the Canadian and German trenches. The Grange Tunnel wasn't open due to flooding from the recent heavy rains. At this point the German and Canadian trenches were only a few 100 metres apart. A labyrinth of tunnels leading up to the ridge (most about a mile long) allowed soldiers to rally in relative safety prior to action. Mines were blown in the middle of no man's land and then the Canadians surged forward to dig in near the German front lines. From here they launched their attack and eventually pushed forward to take the ridge an important strategic point commanding the Douia plain. We were able to go in the trenches and view a step off point.


French National Memorial & Cemetery
Retracing our steps to Givenchy we took the road to Notre Dame de Lorette, the French National Memorial and Cemetery. The cemetery covers 62 acres and holds nearly 40,000 graves. As well as a basilica the cemetery has a lighthouse tower. At night apparently a searchlight at its top constantly rotates and shines. The basilica, roman in style, stands on the spot where a church once stood.

tower, French National Memorial
There is a very ornate and beautiful mosaic of Christ with outstretched arms behind the altar and stained glass windows either side of the nave. Between the basilica and the tower there is the base for a perpetual flame which wasn't lit on the day that we visited. Unlike the British cemeteries the graves are marked with crosses not tablets of stone. I wondered what would happen if you were Jewish and then I saw a single tablet in a row of crosses marked with the star of David and I had my answer.

We crossed the road to the orientation tablet and from there we confirmed what Rick had already guessed, the relative position of Vimy. This ridge also held a commanding view of the Douai plain.


Captain Ball's grave
I'd noticed when we were planning the day that Rose Coombs' book had suggested a detour to visit the grave and crash site of Captain Alan Ball, a young man from Lenton, Nottingham. Britain's highest scoring fighter ace who achieved 44 victories before Lothar Von Richthofen (Manfred's brother) claimed to have shot him down (despite apparently actually being forced to the ground himself seconds before with a punctured fuel tank having been chased by Ball into a cloud) near Anoeullin, north west of Lens. He was only 20 when he died and there was apparently no evidence of battle wounds.

Captain Ball crash site
The current theory is that he got disorientated in the cloud and emerged upside down at 200 feet with no room for manoeuver. Since we had taken the trouble to visit Manfred's crash site it seemed only right that we should do so for Alan. We found his grave easily enough from the directions in the book but spent 45 mins or so trying to locate the crash site. Just as we found it we were about to pull in when the car in front of us pulled to a halt. The lady driver got out and asked us if we were looking for Alan's grave. Bless her, she had seen the GB number plate and guessed that we were looking for him. The village or, I should say, small town of Annouellin hasn't forgotten him. They named their College after him in 1999 and I understand that to this day his grave is still tended by relatives of Mme Cecille Deloffre, a young Frenchwoman who ran to Ball's aid in his final moments.

Marker stone with Cemetery in distance to left of the large building
The crash site itself is not marked at the roadside and is in a field of potatoes some way in near a small copse; although marked by a stone, the crops are planted right up to the stone so it is difficult to see but from here you can see the cemetery only a few hundred yards away. He is not forgotten in Nottingham either apparently as he has a statue in Nottingham Castle and a display in the museum there.

Nearing 7 pm so we decided to chance the shorter motorway route back to the campsite. Lucky we weren't going in the opposite direction back to Lille from Dunkerque as the traffic for a large section from junction 6 to 9 was at a virtual standstill!

permalink written by  rickandsuejohnson on August 16, 2011 from Vimy, France
from the travel blog: Paying our respects
Send a Compliment

Menin Gate and The Last Post but perhaps not ours

Ieper, Belgium


Cloth hall without fair
After another exciting and full day yesterday, we had a day of relative peace today. Shopping at midday and then early evening off to Ieper to see the last post, which is sounded every night at the Menin Gate at 8pm. We aimed for a car park near the Groot markt making sure that this was a recognised place to park. Yet again, we found that the meters were explained in Flemish only and not speaking the language, deciphering the terms was impossible. This is rather surprising as Belgium has 3 official languages, you would have thought that the sign might be in each. Bearing in mind that Ieper is heavily frequented by Brits, you may have expected some concession to this too. All the locals seem to speak English and they are unfailingly helpful and generous and if addressed in English will translate for you. In the event, we discovered that the parking meters finished collecting at 6:30 in the evening, after which it was free until the following morning! Since it was 7 by then we had a free session. And the car was still there when we got back!


House in Grotte Markt
We walked the short distance to the Menin gate where numbers were already beginning to gather. Shortly after, a contingent of (British) cadets arrived and mustered on the pavement outside the gate.

Buglers, Menin Gate
Just before 8, the police arrived and closed off the road on either side and allowed the crowd to go into the road on the town side. The cadets marched to the outside across the road and four buglers, presumably former Belgian Army soldiers marched to the centre of the outer part of the gate facing the town and played the last post. Some wreathes were laid and then the buglers sounded reveille. It was quite a moving experience and as Sue commented was a suitable finale to the battlefields part of our trip.

permalink written by  rickandsuejohnson on August 16, 2011 from Ieper, Belgium
from the travel blog: Paying our respects
Send a Compliment

A walk around Lille

Lille, France


The trains
Today we went to Lille. We caught the train at Bailleul station; BR take note – parking was free for the day, the train was on time at Bailleul and at Lille, although not exactly cheap, comfortable and clean. A double decker, it was a good vantage point on the upper deck for seeing the countryside. We were issued with our 'Billet a composter' – but this is not some cunning recycling scheme; it just means you have to have the ticket punch validated before you get on the train. On arrival at Lille, we made for the Metro and bought a day ticket as this is what the guide book suggests.
The metro is excellent, along the lines of the Docklands light Railway but Lille is quite a compact city and unless you are going beyond the centre, I don't think it is needed at all. Having got off the metro outside the tourist office we discovered that we had only travelled a couple of hundred metres! The tourist office had a useful booklet in English with suggested walking tours round the centre.

Place de General de Gaulle
We booked the city bus tour to get an overview but our trip would not be 'till mid-afternoon so we started on one of the walking tours, taking us through the old and historic centre. Lille has had an eventful 1000 years since foundation in 1066, presumably in celebration of the leaving from Normandy of a certain Duke. It developed as a centre of business between Flanders and the fairs in Champagne. Originally owned by the Dukes of Flanders, economically it was linked with England and the Holy Roman Empire and French kings took a fancy to it.

Place de General de Gaulle
Some carefully arranged political marriages didn't prevent King Philippe August of France engineering control early in the 13th C. However, a marriage of a daughter of Flanders to a Burgundian meant that Lille, along with Brussels and Dijon became part of the Burgundian state in 1363. Another marriage took Burgundy under Habsburg control and subsequently, Spanish in the 1600's. However, a marriage into the Spanish family by Louis XIV in 1663, gave him the opportunity to lay claim to the low countries; he reinforced the claim by laying seige to Lille which resisted for all of 9 days.
Now French, Austria had a crack at it in 1792 but gave up after leaving a few cannonballs embedded in the stonework. During both 1st and 2nd Wws, Lille was overrun by the German Army.

Our walk round the town started appropriately enough at the tourist office which is in what is left of the Palais Rihour built in the 15th C for the Duke of Burgundy, much of this burned down in 1916.


Old Bourse
The Place du General de Gaulle (born in Lille in 1890) is a huge square ringed with elegant buildings, the eye being drawn quickly to the Vieille Bourse as a particularly ornamented building. The building was only restored to its former splendour in 1995 and does look good. Walking though the building, the interior courtyard is filled with 2nd hand booksellers and such but you can see where the marketers would have had their stalls as the walls are labelled – chemicals, mechnical engineering etc..

Opera
On through the old bourse and you come to the place du Theatre with the Theatre itself very in-your-face and surmounted with a huge bas-relief of Apollo and muses. The nearby Chambre de Commerce has a 76 metre high belfry. At the end of the 17th C, Lille managed to acquire a set of town planners who insisted on some homogeneity and required that any facade proposed to be submitted to them for approval.

Chamber of Commerce
This has had the effect of suppressing individuality and led to unusual uniformity of the buildings from this time around the square. Some of the houses here still have the cannonballs embedded in the walls from the battle of 1792. Shame they didn't present the town planners for target practice.

Rue de la Bourse, with cannon balls
I noticed a number of roofs with rooflights and with dormer windows both of which spoiled the line of the roof but undoubtedly enhanced both the accommodation and interest of the building. Just as well there weren't any British planners then! From here we made our way down Rue de la Grande Chaussee with elegant buildings to the strangely named Rue des Chats Bossus. Apparently this is named after an old tanner's sign but this does not really explain why the cats are humpbacked. Perhaps some things are best left unsaid.

L'Huitiere, Rue des chats bossus
In said street, there is an unusual restaurant called l'Huitiere. Heavily decorated in mosaic tiles in an art deco style, it looked splendid. It was closed during the holiday season, so presumably doesn't much care for tourists. Proceeding up the Rue de monnaie, where there used to be a mint, we saw the impressive building originally a Hospital (1692) and now a museum.

Vieux Murs Peterink
Further up the road we went down Rue au Peterinck which has a real feel of taking you back in time, it is lined by small houses once used by weavers. They had workshops on the 1st floor and traded from the ground floor. Near the end of this is the cathedral of Notre Dame de la Treille.

Cathedrale de Notre dame de la Treille
The guide book describes its 'fine harmonious facade dating to 1999' – I can only say that there must be times when town planners go to sleep on the job. About the only word I can agree apart from the date is 'facade'.

Having worked up an appetite, we decided to take a beak from cultural activities and feed the inner person. We found a nice restaurant offering moules frites and placed our order.


Moules frites
Shortly after we were presented with the most enormous bowls of mussels and a lovely bowl of chips. With our upbringing we scoffed the lot and felt very full for some time after. Back to the tourist office for our 3pm bus tour. Well, it was interesting and we did see some things we hadn't seen on our walk but I'm afraid that there wasn't much that we couldn't have covered if we had continued walking for another 40 minutes.

Porte de Paris ca 1690
We wanted to get some tourist mementos but in all the touring we did, hadn't seen anything other than the small shop in the tourist Info Office. We had a little and abortive search before going back to the station for our trip back to Bailleul. The train came in and we climbed aboard. It was incredibly hot inside and it didn't get any better when we left (on time) or at any point on the trip. We were relieved to get off and cool down in the car on the way back to the site.


Deegeur encore

Deegeur
While we were in Lille we managed to see something that would be of particular interest to Freddie and Alfie, so we were pleased to be able to record them. We also saw several Fireman Sam wagons but by the time we were able to record it, they had gone. Sorry about that!

permalink written by  rickandsuejohnson on August 17, 2011 from Lille, France
from the travel blog: Paying our respects
Send a Compliment
Viewing 11 - 13 of 13 Entries
first | previous | next | last

View as Map View as Satellite Imagery View as Map with Satellite Imagery Show/Hide Info Labels Zoom Out Zoom In Zoom Out Zoom In
find city:
trip feed
 author feed
 trip kml
 author kml

   

Blogabond v2.40.58.80 © 2024 Expat Software Consulting Services about : press : rss : privacy