The Last Post

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London to Ypres: July 23-25.

It was great to be able to use some accrued leave to travel to Europe with Mum and Dad and then spend a further four days with them in London.

First thing Wednesday we caught the Eurostar from the new St Pancras Station to Lille, where we picked up a rental car and drove across the Belgium border to the small town of Ypres. On the outskirts we stopped for lunch by a quant church in Hollebeke. Suprisingly, the villiages in Belgium always looked really desserted. Dad did well navigating the motorways given our manual car, the right-hand drive and French and Flemish roads signs!

Our guest house, Le Chat Noir (the black cat), was perfectly located - just five minutes walk to the central square. We also had the house to ourselves and the owner was really informative. (Although at times you'd be forgiven for thinking he'd tagged us with tracking devices as he turned up randomly all over the place! ...Later we found out he was Chief Inspector of Police!)

Only 35,000 live in Ypres (or Ieper), but like us, there were many people making similar pilgramages to family graves, and to see first hand such a defining area of history. Before dinner we walked around the town centre. It was reduced to rubble during the war but you wouldn't know that by looking at today's photos of the beautiful cathedral (a cloth trading hall then) and surrounding buildings.

Back at the house we enjoyed kebabs in the courtyard, then walked to Menin Gate memorial, where they have played The Last Post every night at 8pm since 1928. Hundreds turned out on both nights we went along to commemorate. The thousands whose names are enscribed there seemed like a lot until the following two days when we made our way around some of the 175 cemeteries in the Ypres Salient. Sadly, they are just some of the millions named or buried there.

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