Back Home! E21

Well, it’s been a few days since I last posted!  

We spent our last two days in France just taking it easy on our way to Calais.  After a final ‘wine stock’ on Monday morning (8th) we caught the afternoon ferry to Dover and were back in Blighty a couple of hours later!

 

Instead of rushing straight back to Scotland we had a few ‘admin’ things to do in Gatwick so we finally arrived back in Scotland on Thursday (11th)…...

 

We have been away for ONE year and five days!!………………. Home at last!

 

After the usual ‘moving in’ caper we are nearly settled.  It has taken the better part of four days to get organised and today (well 20 minutes ago to be precise!) we finally got connected to the internet………… hoorah!

 

So amongst other things I just thought I’d close up this blog.  Our big adventure is complete for the time being.  The plan now is to re-establish ourselves in the ‘normal’ world!

 

Tara …… :-)

Battle of the Somme E20

We have spent today (Saturday) touring some of the Battlefields and memorials from the Battle of the Somme 1916.  In this Centenary year of the start of World War One it is difficult to imagine the sheer horror of this war.  The whole of the Somme countryside is filled with dozens of memorials and cemeteries  from the war, some small, and some very large indeed.  Each patch of land that these stand on was given by France in perpetuity to the relevant country in recognition of the lives sacrificed in the war.   As it happens we stumbled upon a few memorials from the four corners of the UK…...

Wales...

 

This is the Franco-British Memorial in Thiepval and at 45 metres high is the largest British war memorial in the world.  It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and built between 1929 and 1932.  It commemorates over 72000 men who were declared missing in the Somme between 1915 and 1918…… On the far side of the monument are the graves of 600 soldiers…...

300 French graves….

300 British graves….

Northern Ireland...

Scotland… Memorial to the 51st Highland Division which is in the grounds of the Canadian Beaumont-Hamel memorial ground

 

This is the memorial to the Newfoundlanders.  In the foreground are original trenches...

 

This tree was called the ‘Danger Tree’ to which many of the Newfoundlanders gravitated towards as their advance was halted in a storm of bullets and shrapnel (July 1st 1916 offensive).

A typical trench from the ‘Front Line'

 

And lastly…….. a rather cute Red Squirrel that we saw in one of the cemeteries 

Bellicourt E19

In September 1918 during the battle for the Hindenburg line this bridge in Riqueval was captured by the allies intact (the Germans had prepared it with explosives but failed to detonate them) and therefore played a vital part in the final stages of the war.

The bridge today….

This photo was taken after the bridge had been captured...

 

One of the many small cemeteries in L’Aisne, in this case a British one.  As always, these are poignant places to be in…..

In 1810 this 5760 metre long tunnel which is part of the Canal de Saint Quentin was opened.  It runs between Bellicourt and Venhuille and since 1906 uses electrically driven chain ‘tugs’ which can tow up to 30 barges at a time.  The tunnel is ‘one way’ every 3 hours.

This is the tug exiting the tunnel at Bellicourt….

and the ‘chain drive’ which lies on the canal bottom and is picked up, passed through the tug pulling it along…. 

and comes out the back… ‘voila'

Coucy le Château E18

Coucy le Château was once one of the largest fortified villages in Medieval Europe.  Much of the keep was blown up by the Germans in 1917 as they withdrew from the area.  The original village was contained within the massive outer walls and protected by strategically position towers.

The keep before being blown up…….

and after…...

Look closely and you will see how a house can be built into a ruined fortification….

maybe not to everyones liking but certainly ingenious ….

The village church.

Monument des Fantomes E17

The Ghosts Monument on Chalmont Hill in Aisne is to commemorate the Second Battle of Marne which took place in July 1918.  In the foreground is the statue of France, carrying a shield bearing the symbolic figures of ‘Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité’.

The main sculpture represents 'seven soldiers with different weapons and, in their midst, a naked youth, a martyred hero, rising up in to the air’  He symbolises the suffering of mankind plunged into war.

I am in this shot to provide scale

It is difficult to imagine how frightening and war torn the view from this high point would have been in 1918…...

Hautvillers E16 (Dom Perignon)

Just a few miles Northwest of Epernay is the charming village of Hautviller…………… here in the Abbey Church lie the remains of Dom Perigon (1639-1715) who is believed to be the inventor of Champagne Wine

Dom Perignon was buried, as a mark of respect and honour, in a section of the abbey traditionally reserved only for abbots

 

Throughout the village there are many traditional wrought iron signs, indicating the nature of the business within…..

 

And lastly, on a wall on one of the houses is this cheeky version of The Morning Prayer……..

Morning Prayer

‘Give me health for a long time,

Work, not too often,

Love, from time to time,

But Champagne all the time.'

 

Nice! …….

 

 

Chablis and Champagne (and Irancy)

I just thought I’d throw in a couple of ‘Aire’ photo’s from the last 2 days.  This one is the aire at Crevant…...

and this one is the aire in Chaource (where the cheese is made) where we stayed last night.

 

The journey from Crevant to Avize turned out to be an expensive one!  We stopped in Irancy and ended up buying a few bottles of Red Burgundy and a bottle of Ratifia, then in Chablis we found some lovely 2009 Petit Chablis 2009 on offer (6 for 4!) and could not resist buying a couple of boxes along with a very special Chablis ‘Grand Cru’ 2009.  As if that lot was not enough we stopped in our favourite Champagne House and bought a few bottles for those ‘special occasions’.  Now then, when I say ‘favourite’ I really mean the same one we called in to last year (sounds good tho’).

 

On the journey today Wolfy passed the 20000 miles mark…..

just here.

 

And then a few miles down the road we came across this lot! Weird!!  (you need to look closely)

 

This is where we bought the Champagne…..

and in the yard are all sorts of lovely old vintage wine machinery…...

 

I featured a few photo’s of the Champagne Museum that is owned by Launois Pére in last years French blog so no need to post anymore here….