Day 79: Arras to Lille

June 13, 2018

The square in front of our hotel has an information panel that states that markets have been held continuously here and in the square behind for 900 years. On Saturday, the main market day, both squares are filled with vendors. Today, Wednesday, is the secondary day, with only a moderate number of vendors, in the second square.

The square with our hotel was ringed jut by the Flemish style houses, while the second square had the city hall on one end. This is in the same style as the houses, but is of course much larger and it has a tall clock tower.

The whole area was beautiful and interesting, and totally unexpected. That is despite the fact that we came to Arras in 2012, on our first trip to Europe, and somehow managed to miss the fact that all this made up the city centre. We arrived at the train station, slept somewhere near it, and pedalled away. What dopes.

We have been looking at trees with unripe cherries for two months now - very frustrating. But in the markets here we can now find good ones. It's less fun to buy them than to pick from trees overhanging the trail.

I liked these houses, particularly the one on the end at the left, but it was not lost on me that the photo also includes a bakery.

Behind the market square is a church that looked to be the cathedral. In fact it is just called the church of St Jean Baptiste. I thought the Jesus figure behind the altar had a great dramatic touch.

We did find the actual cathedral, but it was boring outside and also closed. Do churches vie for cathedral status like chefs looking for Michelin stars?

On the walking street, this rather elegant gentleman began a conversation. After a while we learned that he had lost his wife a year ago, and took it very hard. His 17 year old grand daughter told him not to worry, that his wife was still around - as part of the universe - but that she would be ashamed to see him crying like this. He pulled himself together and has begun to study art history, as well as to strengthen his bad knee with water exercises. We were touched that this lovely man shared all that with us.

Leaving town, some traces of Flemish design

Aside from cruising the market and the squares, our big activity for the day (other than cycling 65 km), was to visit the Canadian memorial at Vimy Ridge. We had always planned to do this, but now we also had an invitation from Jean Desrosiers, the director of Vimy and other centres, to visit him when we arrived. (We had met Jean and two Vimy guides at Courselles, June 6).

The hop from Arras to Vimy would be the first time on this trip that we were not following a named and hopefully signposted cycle route. Instead, from now on, we would rely on tracks made at home and generated by one piece of software or another.

We were glad to land up on the trail shown below, since that road was obviously a no go.

Vimy Ridge is a high point of land that was taken by the Germans and heavily fortified during their initial push into France. In 1914 and 1915 attempts had been made by allied forces to dislodge them, but to no avail. In 1916 the Canadians were to have a crack at it and moved to the line, to begin planning an assault. It was an all Canadian operation, involving all the Canadian divisions. The assault came April 9, 1917, and was successful. The cost, however, was 10,600 casualties (3,600 fatal) from a force of 100,000, not to mention the German losses.

A very dramatic memorial was built at the ridge in the 30's, taking 11 years to build. It features large figures sculpted in limestone by Walter Allward, and sits right on the edge of the ridge. Standing on the edge of the monument is a cloaked female figure, the Mourner, looking out over the ridge.

We missed a turn on our way to the ridge and landed up at Arras Road cemetery. This was not a particularly big one, but it did have many graves of Canadians, with dates of death in April 1917. Dodie noticed one in particular, of John Weir from the 9th of April (the main assault). The thing is, John was 17 years old. He was born in Edmonton, and his parents lived in Vancouver, the registry told us. We wish he had been in high school and not out here. We later learned the minimum age for enlistment then was 16.

John Weir - what would his life have been? What might he have achieved?

Now would be the time to listen to Eric Bogle singing his song "No Man's Land (Green Fields of France)."

From the Arras Road cemetery we were trapped. Our road had ended and the only other one around was an expressway. We looked over to Vimy Ridge. This time is was not protected by guns but by wheat fields. A frontal assault was out of the question. We retreated, and found a small road heading in the right direction. Soon we were at the Memorial.

Jean was away in London, but we met the center director, Joanna. She took a lot of time to talk to us, not to mention organizing a safe place to put out bikes.

With the Memorial director, Joanna, in front of the Flanders Fields display.

The Memorial building and display had been completely redone since we were first here in 2012. At that time the presentation had made us uncomfortable, since it loudly proclaimed Canada's arrival as a "real" country and military power as a result of Vimy. Now we had an understated display that sort of covered all the points about the war and the battle and Canada's status, but very conservatively. Also, as an illustration of the approach, there were things like a grenade, or some shells, in a pristine glass display cube. That's a big contrast with even the museum at Albert, that had piles of the things lying about.

Carrying on this softer theme, there was a temporary exhibition about flowers, emotion, and war. In one section, Canadian soldier George Cantlie is featured. Each night in Europe he wrote a letter to his wife and to one of his children. He always enclosed a different dried flower. The family kept all these letters, and they were on display today.

In another section, the association that certain flowers have with specific aspects of humanity, like devotion, healing, and memory was explored, in relation to some selected person whose story had some special relation to a given flower and emotion. Hard to explain, hard to understand. But much more appropriate than anything about glory and duty would have been.

The letters, with flowers, and some of their meanings

The opposing trenches that formed the front were actually not particularly safe places to be, being open to the sky. So both sides dug extensive tunnel networks, to the extent that there are kms of them under Vimy Ridge. Welsh coal miners were brought in on the allied side, since they were excellent tunnelers. Not sure where the Germans drew theirs from - the Ruhr?

The tunnels were used to store and tranfer material and to safely move people. They were also dug under the enemy and loaded with explosives. Before an above ground attack, these would be detonated, leaving large craters. The Vimy site, by the way, is also pockmarked with shell craters, and the remaining trenches. The grass is kept down by sheep, since unexploded shells are still a threat.

A short tunnel tour was offered, with a Parks Canada guide. These are college kids on short term job assignments. Ours, Hannah, was very smart and well spoken, and gave an excellent account of the trenches and the attack.

The tunnels were surprisingly deep underground.

Trench recreation. The trenches zigagged to prevent anyone being able to shot straight along one.

We went out to the actual monument and had another look at the heroic carved figures that surround it. These are meant to represent Faith, Hope, Honour, Charity, Sacrifice, Peace, Knowledge, Justice, and Truth. When we looked at this is 2012, the idealized figures seemed quasi-religious and weird. This time, they seemed just dramatic, and of course the concepts they are said to represent are worth idealizing.

Heroic figure of Peace, atop the monument

We had booked a place in Lille, 40 km distant. In principle, at our usual 10 km/hr crawl that would be 4 hours away. But the route was convoluted and road markings not always there or clear. While not an intense urban scene, what we had was sort of continuous nondescript village, always with lots of cars trundling around. The places had names in that this used to be distinct villages, but only occasionally could we see the features of a real village (city hall, central square, etc.) we went from named place to named place.

We thought we were in the clear when we got onto the Canal de la Deule, which should have run all the way into Lille and which had a great path beside it. But this fell to pieces in a mess of construction, and detour signs led us nowhere, before disappearing.

In a way that we had previously seen only in Germany, a woman spotted us creeping confusedly along a sidewalk, turned her car around, parked, and came over to see if she could sort us out. Dodie and she pored over our detailed map for a fairly long time, before a possible route was decided.

We were choosing, obviously, small roads. But a small road is by definition narrow, and if just enough cars are on it they go into their suicidal passing routine. Whether we hug the curb or take the lane, there seems no way to get French drivers to behave prudently.

Traffic, parked cars, and garbage cans did not leave much room for us

Typical nondescript street on our route. However, note the decorative high tension electric towers!

Towns like Lens are not for tourists. Lens was a coal town. This looks like plain worker housing.

Ah, a canal route straight to our destination?

Our canal path to Lille dream collapses amidst construction.

More slow noodling on crowded streets. These appear as D roads on our map, but progress along them is slow.

Finally, at 8 p.m. or after, we came into the section of the Lille outskirts containing our B&B. To get to the actual address, we passed through a very grotty public housing project, and were a bit leary when we rang the bell of our nearby house. The man who answered, Jean Luc, was a bit puzzling. He spoke English and French, but I had lots of trouble understanding him in either, and vice versa. Still, the room was fine, so it's ok. And our bikes are safe in a walled garden.

We are realizing that our tracks prepared at home will not be of much use, and we are going to have to find safer, probably river based routes through Belgium. Tomorrow we will go to Ypres, and there in Belgium we should be able to scope out a reasonable route through to Netherlands.

Today's ride: 64 km (40 miles)
Total: 5,258 km (3,265 miles)

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Andrea BrownAs always, that Eric Bogle song breaks my heart.
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6 years ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesWatch out for the Last Post, Day 78
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6 years ago