Blogs from Picardy, France, Europe - page 10

Tuesday 30 September 2008 A rainy day in France - sadly. Anyway, the plan was to visit Amiens Town, then Peronne, then American Memorial at Bony and then on to Saint Quentin. Found our way into Ameins and a town centre underground car park, we are definetly getting better at the driving and finding our way around. We only had one car beep at us today. We had a quick coffee at the first place we came to, Le Carlton. Strolled around the town for a short while, found the tourist office, for the city map etc. It was drizzling so we had a walk around the Amiens Cathedral, for a while. A beautiful piece of architecture and not small. It wasn't completely destroyed during the war, but nearly. We walked around for a while longer, ... read more

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: ... read more

I decided that of all the historic places I wanted to see in France, and in my life in general, Verdun was very high if not top on the list. In 1916, the area near Verdun, a small town in Picardie became the seat of one of the largest battles in the history of the world. As the lines stablilized and the infamous trenches became established, the German Chief of Staff, one Erich Von Falkenhayn, decided that the only way to win the war was not through traditional victories at strategic points, but rather through a complete and thourough destruction of the French army. He wrote to the Kaiser explaining this: "The string in France has reached breaking point. A mass breakthrough—which in any case is beyond our means—is unnecessary. Within our reach there are objectives ... read more