Belgium Battlefields & Venice of the North

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Arrived back in the UK yesterday afternoon (Tuesday 17th May) having dropped the hire car off at Calais Ferry port and took the trip across the channel. I must say I got used to driving on the right hand side of the road and when I picked up our other hire car in Dover it felt a bit strange driving on the left again. Anyway this blog is about the preceding 3 days or so.

We arrived in Ieper (or Ypres in French) on the 13th May. This is just over the French border in Belgium. In this area the people speak a dialect of Dutch..... however we found most people spoke English; in fact at least 3 - 4 languages. We stayed at a B&B on a farm that each year finds old shells, gas cannisters, helmets and guns etc when they plough the fields each spring. The lady who owns it has a special interest in the Great War so was able to assist some of our visits to battlefield sites.One of the highlights of our visit was the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ieper. The last post has been played at 8pm every night since 1928. There were around 500 – 600 people there and one of the crowd controllers said they get similar crowds each night; assume mainly during the warmer months. One of the buglers was 85 years old and has been playing most nights since the 1950's. We were told that in the 1960's – 70's he was sometimes the only one there apart from the 2 Police officers that closed the road for the 15 ceremony....... how times have changed. There are thousands of names inscribed on the walls of the Menin Gate and are all those Commonwealth soldiers who lost their lives in the area, but have no named grave. We found my brother-in-law's great uncles name on one of the panels.

On our last day in the area we visited the graves of Jane’s 2 great uncles buried at Kemmel Commonwealth Cemetery; brothers killed on the same day in March 1918.

Now for something brighter. We left on Sunday for Bruge and spent a couple of nights. This is a great little city set on a number of canals.... hence its name as the Venice of the North. It has many medieval buildings. Like many such towns/cities it has a central market square with a clock tower and circled in cafes. For those who saw the movie about assassins called “In Bruge” will remember the square and the clock tower.

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Photos

German bunker
This is a bunker at Hill 60 which is a site where Aussie miners dug tunnels under the German trenches to set explosives.