Thursday 28 May

Free WIFI in the hotel room in Arras!!!!

The day starts in Amiens and it is lightly drizzling.

Today we are doing what the locals call The Circuit Of Remembrance.

We start in Albert in the 1916 museum. After you pay at ground level you descend into tunnels that have been used since the 15th century! Last used as an air raid shelter in WWII. Look up Albert in Google and the story of the tilting/leaning Virgin. The museum is dedicated to the battle of the Somme. Great artefacts and reconstructions. Very impressive and a good start to the day. Sharing the depths of the earth with us are two groups of schoolkids (again!); younger girls from England and older co-eds from France. BOTH groups are well behaved and polite!

Next was Longueval. First to show Tina Caterpillar Valley cemetery where the body of of the Unknown Warrior (reburied in Wellington in 2004) came from. Then on to the South African monument at Delville Wood. Very impressive. Outside is a very nervous Oz woman from Bathurst. She is worried about the woods.

On to Lochnagar Crater (100m wide, 30m deep) in La Boisselle. Evidently when it went off Lloyd George heard it in London. The land is owned by an Englishman as the French were going to fill it in and put a road through. Good on him for buying he land and opening it up to all.

Next is the hugely impressive monument at Thiepval. A combined French-English tribute to the missing (ie no body). Over 70,000 names on its wall. Read “Birdsong” – there is a passage where the woman researcher comes to it and weeps.

On the way we slowed but did not stop to look at the Ulster Tower.

Lastly, we go to Beaumont-Hamel where the New Foundlanders attacked. The impressive trench systems are still largely intact.

TomTom delivers us to the front door of the Holiday Inn Express in Arras (room 131 – two doors down from the room I stayed in in 2006). No dramas driving today. No meltdowns.

We go for a stroll and decide we would like a change from French cuisine. We go into a Chinese restaurant and proceed to have the worst Chinese meal ever (serves us right I suppose). Everything (and I do mean everything) is microwave reheated), formica tables and plastic on the seat cushions. At least it’s cheap (after last night’s expensive meal) and our tummies are full.

Stroll into the centre of Arras with its lovely cathedral and Flemish style architecture of tall, thin buildings and cobblestone streets. Very picturesque.

Back for free internet!

Tomorrow could be interesting. I do not have TomTom maps for Belgium and we are headed for Ieper (Ypres). We have a plan (go to closest point in France and hope for signs) but the potential for disaster is high!