Tuesday 29 July Albert to Ieper (Ypres)

David woke at 5:00 with bad stomach pain, and was pretty crook all day. But we have soldiered on.
First we went back into Albert to their museum, which is housed underground in passages originally built in about 14th century as refuge tunnels.

We then went back towards Villers-B to the second Australian memorial at Le Hamel, but this is currently being rebuilt, so there was not much to see.


Our next stop was Thiepval, the massive memorial tower which honours 72,000+ soldiers whose bodies were never found or never identified (buried with a tombstone saying 'Known unto God').

As you drive along you keep passing little cemeteries, with their neat rows of stones, and lists of names, and you try to picture what it was like. But the potatoes are growing, the wheat is being harvested and the hay-bales are being rolled up, and it is so green and peaceful, and Ballarat's population is about 90,000.
I had lunch at Poziers while David had a doze, and then we went on to Louverval,

where I finally met our Uncle Dick and his chum.

I left him a koala, and wrote in his visitors' book. There was a photo left under one column of names on the wall. It showed four generations of guys who remembered their father, grandfather, gr-grandf, and gr-gr-grandf.

We then hit the motorway, and hurtled along with the crowds, got lost a little at the end, but found Ieper (Ypres) in Belgium.

We set up in a hotel in the main square, and I went for a little walk while David slept.
We went together to the Mennin Gate


where, with about 500+ others, we attended the local daily commemoration and playing of 'The Last Post', which has happened every evening since 1928.

The gate itself is huge, and has nearly 55,000 names of soldiers missing in the Ieper area.

and now WE HAVE INTERNET!!!!
At last I have been able to upload a whole heap of blog, but alas, still no photos. I don't know what has gone wrong with 'Blogger'. Can anyone help??



Monday 28 July Bayeux to Albert

We walked to the station early, and made some phone calls to try to find an Avis hire car. There was one available at Lisieux, so off we went, changing trains at Caen. We have heard of it before - our house at Padstow Heights was built on land previously owned by a Catholic children's home called Lisieux, and judging from the number of large basilicas and abbeys we could see around, it is a pretty holy place.

Well we got our car, a bright blue Citroen C2 - 1100cc which is a bit gutless on hills, but otherwise is pretty good. David was a bit apprehensive about driving on the right-hand side, but we have had 7 weeks of living with it, and he found it very easy, as most people said he would.

So we left Lisieux,



tried to avoid Rouen but the ring-road petered out, and there we were in the traffic.

But we made it, and on to Amiens, where we deliberately tackled the suburbs rather than risk getting on a toll road we couldn't get off. And we found Villers-Bretonneux, and the big Australian War Memorial.


Each cemetery and memorial has a little cupboard built in, where they keep an alphabetical list of all the names, and a visitors' book. I opened the register, and the first name I read was Douglas David McKenzie, aged 26, of Warrenheip St, Bunninyong.
We climbed the tower, but hurried back just as a thunderstorm caught up with us.


We went on to Albert,

asked at the tourist office about B&B, and ended up choosing the cute little garden house owned by the tourist lady.

We went for a walk, had tea, drove a little way out of town to a huge crater left when British tunnellers blew up a German command post in 1916,
and then went off to bed.