Armentieres: Mademoiselle from Armentieres parlez vous.........

September 25, 2016

Last night we ate in a little restaurant next door to the Hotel on the Grand Place. Clearly it was a family restaurant as there were a number of family groups looking as if they were celebrating some sort of special occasion. The food was beautiful and I enjoyed watching the family dynamics that were unfolded, in particular the ones next to us where the mother and daughter clearly had some sort of issue and dad was trying very hard to sort it out. I had my favourite Andoulette and Ken a warm goats cheese salad - very good indeed.

Today we were riding to Armentaires and the first aim was to get to the Canadian Memorial which is on Vimy Ridge, Ken had researched the route out and it worked out well. Vimy Ridge is on 'the high ground' so naturally it was climbing all the way. When we got to the memorial we were amazed by the huge number of people around. Bus loads, walkers, car loads and cyclists. Ken got an urge to talk to a Canadian about it but all the ones he questioned were English or French. It is a really impressive sight with all the mine and shell craters just left to grass over and the really impressive and huge memorial on the sky line. We were told that the guides are all Canadian and volunteers who come over from some university for 6 months to do the job. Seeing there were no flesh and blood Canadians to talk to we just had to make do with virtual ones - yes Steve and Dodie, and think about the sacrifice their countrymen made all those years ago.

The road down from the memorial was very steep and exciting to ride. There were lots of serious looking cyclists coming up presumably training cyclists from Lens doing their regular Sunday ride. Getting through Lens was suprisingly easy - just follow the signs into the Centre Ville then after the railway bridge turn a sharp left into the 947. This is a very long straight road and probably would have got us all the way to Armentieres but we were very keen to visit Fromelles so after a long time on it we turned off and started a zig zag trip. The potato harvest is certainly in full swing and they were all out working even on a Sunday. Interestingly in the fields that had already been worked over locals were out with buckets and bags picking up the left overs. Fromelles is the place that was a nightmare for the Aussies. When they came from Egypt they went to Fromelles to join in the warfare there. On their first day of attack they lost 5500 men - the worst casualties ever sustained by the Aussies on a single day. There are many cemeteries nearby but what is particularly poignant is the Australian Memorial with its many many names and the moving statue of an Aussie carrying his mate out on his back.

Then onto Armentieres to find that we couldn't get into the hotel till at least 5pm. I was sitting on the step typing that and along came a man on a bicycle. It was John he was staying at the hotel and had a key so could let us in. Ken had gone for a walk - off went John on his bike and found him let us in and we found our labelled key at reception. John is an English man who is over here touring the battlefields on his bike. He is 81 (thinks we are young!) and is riding a Raleigh 20 without gears. Being an Englishman he had bought his kettle with him and of course had tea bags so insisted that we had a cup of tea!

The grassed over craters around the Canadian Memorial

Oposite the Canadian Memorial is the Morocan Memorial

The slag heeps are enormous and the result of previous coal mining

Along the route were many houses like this

An early post war 2 cylinder water cooled MAN

The Australian Cemetery at Fromelles the place where those huge loses occurred

The moving statue at the Australian Memorial at Fromelles showing a digger rescuing his injured mate

In the middle of some fields are old bunkers. Hitler was in one near here in WW1 a pity he wasn't blown up

Today's ride: 66 km (41 miles)
Total: 2,745 km (1,705 miles)

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