What a difference a country makes

Sunday 5^th June

Another overcast and misty/foggy day in France. At least the temperature was a couple of degrees warmer than 2 days ago.

We are now in the Somme and surrounded by memorials to Commonwealth forces lost in WWI. We started by visiting the Victoria school at Villers Bretonneux which houses the Franco Australian war museum. A couple of notable things we found here were carvings of Australian animals done at the Daylesford Tech school, and that Robinvale is a sister town to Villers Bretonneux and was named by the parents of one of the soldiers killed in battle, whose name was Robin.

Next stop was the British War cemetery at Pozieres where Rob’s great uncle Alex LeMaitre is buried. It is quite touching to see just how well these cemeteries and memorials are maintained.

Don't think the colour is quite right but this was a huge poppy.

On to Hem Farm memorial where Robert Mactier from Tatura, a VC recipient, is buried. The story of his heroic efforts is recorded in the register at the cemetery.

Crossing the border into Belgium and the roads became rough – they use concrete slabs everywhere so every join there is a thump. Where the roads in France mostly had speed limits of 90, in Belgium a lot of the roads were 70. It was a long, slow drive to the town of Kortjik in Belgium where we are staying tonight. We have stepped up just a notch tonight because we struggled to find anything in our price range, and we are in a hotel with a lift. It is still just a bed and a shower though. The bonus about coming to Belgium though is that the temperature picked up 10 degrees and we were able to get the jumpers off. Hopefully it remains this way for a few days.

Our view coming into the last town we passed through in France.

And less than a kilometre this is at the roundabout of the first town in Belgium - no formal border line that we saw,

We have just returned from the Last Post ceremony at Menin Gate. Very moving. Sadly the piper had some issue with his pipes so we didn’t get to hear them. We reckon there would have been 700 people there and a lot of Aussie voices heard in the crowd. There was a large contingent of Brits there – the group Help for Heroes who are just setting out on the Big Battlefield Bike ride.

 

Some of the crowd at Menin Gate tonight.

This group laid a wreath on behalf of the help for heroes bike riders.

The cathedral in Ypres.