AmIENS

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Bonjour,

We are on our way.
We picked up the cqr at the airport and had a 2 hour drive to Amiens: Although we had had a short tutorial on GPS it took a while to work out how to drive it:
We arrived at Blangy-Tronville for our B&B to be met by the lovely Patricia; She runs the b&b with her husband Alain who teaches Anglais at the Université;
They are lovely people:
We spent the afternoon touring the battlefields of Pozieres: very moving: We called in at the British graveyard: There were so many headstones with the same date;
On the first dqy of the Somme 20000 British died, the greatest nu,ber of losses in a single day in modern times; in Britain whole families from the one town would join up en masse: so when the casualties were notified it was not unusual to have four brothers from the same family die on the one day: and this was repeated in every street in the town: We saw the lasr re,aining crater nade by tunneling un der the German lines and burying huge mines which were then exploded:

We then called in at Albert (home of Airbus )to see the Somme mueum: it,s in a series of tunnels underneqth the town and has an amazing amount of original war materiel: boots, arms, helnets etc: What is amazing is that you can purchase most of this tsuff in the tourist office at the end of the tour: We passed:

We,ve had a problem with the car and they have had some difficulty getting a part so we are not sure at this stage whether we will get to Caen tonight: PATRICIA AND aLAIN HAVE BEEN FANTASTIC/ FERRYING US AROUND AND MAKING SURE THE PEOPLE AT cITROEN DON?T GIVE US THE RUN AROUND:

Liz would like to add some stuff while i prepqre to organise film:
We are mooching around Amiens now. The Cathedral is huge (aren't they all) and has references to allied soldieers, including flags hanging in a chapel
For the ladies reading this: French women look so elegant compared to tthe majority of Oz women: small earrings, lots of black and grey clothes with touches of colour like a scarf. En masse though it all looks very drab. The popular coat seems to be a padded midi length black one, possibly feather?
Well, time to move out into the 3 degrees outside! It snowed last night for about half an hour!
Love to all

update

the car took é days to fix. the hotel in Caen cancelled our booking and Caen and surrounds was booked out for the night: We ended up drivinbg 50 ks up the road and flopped into bed at about 11:30:

today we drove to Nantes; I guess the Normandy coast will have to wait until next time;

More tomorrow:

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Comments

[Michelle]

Ah, typical
Too bad to hear about the car. I hope you were still able to enjoy the surrounds although the original plans were miffed by fate. Ah... the joys of travelling. You've still got your passports right?

[Stacey]

news from home
Leti is going to Cqnberrq for Rudd's 20/20 summit !!!!