Monday 2nd June 2014
Train from Paris to Amiens arrived at 11:10am and we checked into our accommodation before having a walk around town. Amiens is a beautiful town with the centrepiece a massive cathedral built from 1220 to 1270. We had some lunch and were chatting to an English couple. The English guy was a London bobby for 30 years and he has been to Amiens many times as his hobby is war history.
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| Amiens cathedral |
After lunch we paid 3 Euro each for an audio guide and spent over an hour looking through the cathedral. It is the largest gothic cathedral in France with a floor area of 7000 square meters and height of 42 meters. We particularly liked the 8 frames depicting John the Baptist life and the cathedral also houses his skull. There was one particularly great sculpture with one part a weeping angel leaning on a skull which was made famous with when the troops sent photos back from the war. More walking around town and the canal area of Saint Leu (nicknamed Little Venice) and finished the day off with a simple dinner in our room after a stop at the supermarket.
One funny story we forgot from our cheap room in Bordeaux a few days ago - the same hotel where they locked AR in when he had to catch the train! After we checked in we went to the top floor and our room was small and stuffy but was cheap and just one night ready for an easy getaway to the train station over the road. There wasn't any air conditioning and the fan was missing from the ceiling - just some holes where the fan used to be. Then the internet wasn't working on that floor but was OK on other floors. We decided to go and chat to the guy on reception who knew a little bit of English.
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| Amiens cathedral pulpit |
We went down and tried to explain that the fan was missing but he kept saying "not working" and we kept saying things like "fini" etc. and doing our best Manuel impressions of clouds of magicians smoke but he decided he had better come up and have a look. He locked the front door and put up a (back soon?) sign and up we went. When we got to the room he looked where the fan should be on the ceiling and appeared at a total loss for how this could of happened. He noticed we had opened the window, walked over and craned his neck to see if it had somehow exited the window and was four floors down below on the pavement. After returning downstairs and checking the maintenance book to find no record of a missing fan, he still looked like he had suspicions that we had hoicked it out the window but gave us another room and there we had good internet and a ceiling fan, although the fan it wobbled so terribly we decided to sleep with it off lest it dropped from the ceiling onto our sleeping bodies.
Tuesday 3rd June 2014
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| Amiens cathedral memorial stone |
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| Amiens cathedral |
Sandy's sister Julie arrived at 8:10am and the three of us went on a tour of the battlefields at 9am with small group company Terres de Memoire. We were joined by two sisters and their husbands from Perth. Our guide Lea, a young French girl with an Irish accent (on account of the fact that she went to Dublin to study English) drove us around the battlefields for the day. She was just superb and we all felt like she also really appreciated the efforts of the Australian troops who have a great reputation as brave and formidable soldiers.
First stop was the Australian memorial near Villers-Bretonneux where the names of 11,000 Australians who died in France but are still missing and have no grave are listed on a huge memorial. There are also 2,000 graves there including 1,200 Australians.
Then we drove into Villers-Bretonneux and were amazed by the town who still honours the efforts of the Australian troops in the 1st world war. There are streets with Australian names and many Australian animals depicted or shop/restaurants named after them. The school is called the Victorian School and was funded by Victorian kids who raised money to have it re-built after the war. The main assembly hall has lots of carvings of Australian animals in the wooden panelling that was imported from Australia. In the courtyard there is a massive sign that reads 'Never forget Australia". The Germans advancing the western front took the town but only held it for one night and the Aussies re-took and saved the town.
Upstairs in the school is a museum and has lots of war artefacts, photographs and memorabilia plus all the Australian state flags and original footage movie reels. It was simply amazing the warmth the town felt towards our country from our contribution nearly 100 years ago.
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| Amiens cathedral |
After lunch we visited we visited Pozieres where many Australians lost their lives in one square kilometre bordered by three points that we visited with the nicknames Gibraltar, Moo Cow (Moquet) Farm & the Windmill.
We visited the Thiepval memorial where 72,000 missing British & South African men are listed on a memorial and there is an interesting museum with timelines of the war and a movie.
Next was the Newfoundland Memorial Park at Beaumont-Hamel where trenches can still be seen. There are lots of trenches left as they were abandoned. They are all ziz-zagging and the reason was that if the enemy made it to the trench or if there was an explosion in the trench it didn't travel all up the trench but had to go around corners. There were many feeder trenches for water and supplies etc. and the German trenches were about 150 meters on the other side of 'no mans land'. It was a fascinating and emotional day.
Wednesday 4th June 2014
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