The Euraille train leaves from St Pancras Station, it's almost like an airport lounge. We leave about 11am Saturday morning
The train is fast...and I do mean fast even through London and the immediate country side.
The train stats for those interested
Average speed 290kmph
Fastest speed 332kmph (we went just over 300!)
Tunnel lenght  50 km
Tunnel depth 75meters
Trip London to Lille 2hours

We found our apartment without too much trouble, dragging suitcases over cobblestones on the way.

Rick at the front door.

We are quite central between Place de Republic and the Grand Place (town square).
After getting some food for tea we had a quick wander around our area.

Sunday, drizzley today,
The hire car is ready for collection so we wander back to the railway station to collect it. Peugeot auto with sat nav 😊. And as she sends us home to our parking garage without a hitch that's a big plus.
The rest of the day is spent having a look around the old town in the Grand Place area. It's quite beautiful.

Lille, Cloth Hall

 There are a lot of people out this evening, it turns out that it is a celebration for the museums and they are all open tonight and free, also there is a demonstration against the European elections (I think) and there are heavily armed (machine guns , the lot) riot police alongside the Prefecture of Police at the end of our street. It turns out to be a quiet night.

Monday, Sunny and bright and our exploring of the Somme begins.
Our tour of the WW1 battlefields begins, we are both following in family footsteps, as both Rick and I have ancestors who took part in these events.
First stop is the town of Villers Brettoneux and The Sir John Monash Centre which has only been opened in the last couple of years. As we walked up through the cemetery toward the SJM centre I was quite taken by the wonderful sculptured flags along side the gate posts...then I saw the thousands of names along the walls between the gate posts. These are the missing Australians who have no grave as yet. There are about 10,000 on these walls. between those and the very moving museum films it has been an emotional morning.

View from Tower at Monash

Le Hamel monument

Next we visit the Australia Corps memorial at Le Hamel and Albert Iles grave at Crucifix corner.
(Family Tree Note; Albert Henry Iles KIA 8/7/18 was Jack (Grandpa) Iles uncle, brother of John Edward (Pop) Iles)
Back to Lille via Dernancourt.

I pinched a Poppy from roadside in Villers B

Tuesday, another sunny day.
A visit today to a wonderful little museum at Bullecourt. Most of the memorabilia has been collected by the late Mayor of Bullecourt. He was a farmer and found most of the collection in his own fields. He and his wife had put together the museum themselves.
What I particularly liked is that he didn't discriminate and there are German and Allied artifacts here.
On our way again and next we find the Lochnagar crater, another private exhibition (this time owned by an Englishman who bought the field as the crater was part of an English army action)

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It's not far from Pozieres, where we have a picnic lunch overlooking Mouquet Farm (called Moo Cow farm  by the irreverent Australians). Mouquet is still a working farm, although the buildings are all new.
That's one thing that I thought curious as we drive through the villages, that they aren't the quaint 'chocolate box' prettiness of the English countryside. Then it dawned on me, not one of the buildings in any of these villages and towns is more than 100 years old. So many were rebuilt after WW1 only to be once again smashed to smithereens in WW2.
Our final call for the day is the huge and very moving Thiepval monument, it looks toward Mouquet Farm. The monument recall the names of 72,000+ missing ( no known grave) Commonwealth soldiers.

The whole area of the Somme is quite flat, there are rises and dips but it is not hilly, so I can imagine any wood, forest, or farm building would provide essential shelter as did Mouquet Farm for both sides at various times.


Wednesday sunny again
For a change of scenery we head for the coast, to Dunkerque, (and a change of war, WW2). Here is where the allies were evacuated from France to England in thousand of little private boats over the nights of  May 26 to June 4. Over 300,000 servicemen escaped by waiting several days for their turn, while a war was going on behind them.

We had lunch on the edge of the wide flat beach and explored the old part of town that is still intact as it was before either war. Cobblestones and all.
On the way home we called in to Poperinge, to see a wonderful RnR house for mostly English soldiers in the area.

Talbot House

Talbot House garden

 It's called Talbot House and its here behind the lines that the soldiers relaxed, put on music hall shows, caught up with friends etc. It's a really restful place for we travellers too who have had our emotions rattled for the past couple of days. It has really peaceful feel and the garden in the back is quite a treasure within any of these towns.
Ypes is also on our way home and it's here every night of the year that, buglers play the Last Post at the Menin gate.

I feel I can't tell you yet again that the Menin gate is a memorial to soldiers with no graves  as it's all we seem to have seen. That's not strictly true but the cemeteries appear everywhere. I do mean everywhere, every village or towns has at least one if not multiple Commonwealth War Graves. It turns out that in many cases these arose out of necessity. They began as Clearing Stations, Medical Stations and Military Aid stations, which all required small cemeteries, which became CWGraves in the time after the war.
For instance the cemetery where Alby Iles is buried has about 1000 graves and is quite small and almost hidden by raised main road, we nearly missed it altogether

Thursday, sunny
We've decided to take day off. We'd lost our camera so that had added a level of frustration as it has on it some photos we needed for further investigation.
So we each did our own thing this morning, I went shopping ( of course, I'm in France!) decided that nice shoes and cobblestones don't mix. So after a bit of shopping and a bit much hobbling on cobbles I came home to a much happier husband, Rick had found the camera in the car.
Now that we are all happy again off we toddled to the other end of town, where I sniffed out the Wazeeme market. Like most markets there's a lot of junk but there as also great fruit, veges, meat, bread, cheese etc.

Palace de Beaux Arts

Tonight the art gallery at Beaux Arts is open till 6pm so we wandered over and had a look. There's masses of religious art ( as you'd expect) which is not to my taste at all, however there were a number of good little portraits and a lovely room of impressionist, in particular some Edouard Vuillard still lifes.
The gallery (palace) has only recently been completely renovated and  after being damaged in WW1
The Grand Place, (town centre) has a wonderful clock/bell tower so we made it in time for the 6pm bells, which Rick recorded for a guy at work who is a bell ringer at the bell tower in Perth.
I made some soup for tea and we had an early night.

Friday, still sunny, (they keep promising rain)

Ypes Cloth Hall. We climbed the clock tower!

Back to Ypes to have look around the town, we climbed the bell tower. I don't know how I did it as it was quite scary. Though not as terrifying as when we had to go out onto the battlements, which even made the men a bit nervous. I'd like to say I enjoyed the view, but I doubt I saw much (and that was the only way down btw)

On the Bell Tower, holding on tight

On the way down Rick and I stopped on the carillion floor to catch our breath just as the quarter hour bells chimed. OMG!! Lucky we were safe inside as we both jumped and took off in fright. Man it was loud.
Ypes has been rebuilt as it was before WW1 after some discussion. It seems as not everyone wanted to look back and many rather wanted to take advantage of new homes and town centre. The centre market place and ancient Cloth Hall and all the buildings close to the town centre have been built as they were and I have to say they are magnificent.

A town close by is Zonnebeke which has a lovely wooded park and lake. From here we walked out to see the Tyne Cot Cemetery, the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world ( has the most actual burials) and my god it's big.

Can't show how big it is

But can show how well they are looked after

More Australian are buried here than at any other war cemetery in the world. There was a woman on a tour who I over heard say " That's it, no more cemeteries for me". I know how she feels, it's quite overwhelming, but that is why we've chosen to come to this part of France and it has been quite fascinating, otherwise. We had walked to the cemetery and memorial along the roads but found an old railway line ( now a walking/ cycling trail) back to town which was much nicer and settled the mind after the cemetery.
We'd also had enough by then and after buying some steak for tea hopped back on the road to home, along with all the workers at peak hour, it took us over an hour to travel about 5kms home. We'll be back at Zonnebeke tomorrow though as I left my phone at the cafe where we had afternoon tea!

Saturday drizzle early sunny later
Today is the last day of our tour of the battlefields etc. First of all though we had to return to Zonnebeke to retrieve my phone that I had forgotten after we had afternoon tea yesterday. Then on to Polygon Wood, just out of town. It's early, drizzly, quiet and the only sound is the birds in the wood and our footsteps on the gravel.

Behind me is the monument to the Australians

 It's here that a cafe owner recently ( last five years or so) found the remains of five Australians and as we were having a coffee at his cafe he began re-counting that experience to a group of contributors who are financing the next step in their recognition/reburial.

Polygon Wood Cemetery and monument

It's not far to a little known "museum" at Hooge crater, it's in the grounds of an hotel and quite eerie as it's been left much as it might have been in 1918. Most other places with trenches have lawns and gardens surrounding them but here there is a mess, makes it a bit more real in a way.
Hill 60 of the Australain movie fame is next down the road.( It's very surprising just how close to each other all of these places are). Hill 60 is another memorial that has been left much as it was (ie no cemetery or headstones) and nature is reclaiming her own, so though it is a memorial it's also a wooded walking area for the towns folk.

Anzac Rest Cafe

Toronto Road now all Australian graves

One little cemetery that we did find (eventually) was a small Australian one from quite early in the war, Called Toronto Road as the Canadians first used it. It's very near to the place where both the German and the Allied soldiers celebrated their first Christmas with a truce and a game of soccer. Though it's so well hidden, we took two days to find it.

These sticks German trench/ those sticks Allied trench, soccer in between!

The cemetery is hidden away in the wood behind the soccer game memorial and took some finding. As to the Christmas truce, there are rebuilt trenches to show where both sides were at the time and, honestly they could have almost reached out and shook hands without leaving the trench. So close.

The last port of call and one I had been waiting for was Fromelles, the Australian's first engagement in with the Germans. The town itself is very small and indistinct from many others.
There's a monument  called The Cobbers and a cemetery, VC Corner, here also with no headstones, which after acres and acres of them is somehow a easier to take.

We drove through Armentieres, no madamoiselles to be seen so we have come on home.
We'e quite done now with this part of our French adventure and now on to some cultural exploits...
It's been an interesting and some times tough week as our emotions have taken a battering, but I'm really pleased to have finally been able to put places to the names I've read about for so long.