Alba Tour - August September 2006 - Week 1

Friday 18 August to Saturday 26 August: Dover to York via Iepers and Paris

It's hard to remember back to our very eventful holiday in August / September. I think it took a month to recover once I arrived back. I flew out on the 19th of August for a relatively easy 8-hour direct flight to Gatwick. All the last minute stuff (including saying goodbye to Fin and Tutu at the kennel) seemed to fall into place OK. Jane, Mum and I didn't really have a backup plan if we somehow missed finding each other (they flew into Heathrow), so I was quite relieved when they wandered into the car rental place at Gatwick airport the next morning - after what must have been a bit of an epic trip from Sydney.

The trip from that point is a bit of a blur. We crammed a lot in - plenty of highlights, plenty of navigational glitches but no major unfortunate incidents - if you discount the sledding trip I took down a flight of stairs (sans sled) a couple of weeks in ... and Mum's bung knee from our tandem cycling trip along the Avon & Kennet Canal in Bath. It would have been nice to spend a few extra days at the posh new spa that opened there this year ... next time!

There's a problem loading pics, so just one for now: Capel Le Ferne at Dover (remember the Battle of Britain? There's a memorial there overlooking the Channel. We spent a couple of nights in Dover after arriving. While there, we went for a walk along the cliffs to the South Foreland Lighthouse - a lovely walk, followed by a quick beer in the Coastguard pub at St Margaret's Bay before the return trip.

A few more pics. From Dover we caught the ferry to Dunkerque and, after disembarking, drove through torrential rain to Iepers. After finding 'B&B Hortensia' in Iepers, we walked in the rain down to the square, had a quick meal, then joined about 150 other people who had gathered to listen to three men from the local volunteer fire brigade play the last post under the Menin Gate. It has been played at 8.00 pm every day since 1929 (excepting during WWII) - it was very moving.

The second picture is of the memorial at Pozieres. Our reason for the trip to the Somme was mainly to visit Villers Bretonneux and see the memorial to two distant relatives (of Mum's great grandfather), William Henry Hannam and Arthur Hobbs. Both enlisted in the 45th Battalion (12th Brigade, 4th Division). They arrived in France in June 1916 and fought at (and survived) Pozieres in August.

They both died six months later about three days apart. The Red Cross 'eyewitness' records provide heartwrenching accounts such as "I was told by W.H. Hannam, a cousin of Hobbs that he was killed in a trench at Gaudecourt on Feb. 19th by a shell which bled all his chest away. Probably he was buried in the trench at night. Hannam was killed at the same post on Feb. 21st. They were both old friends of mine." Of Hannam's death, one witness states "I was an eye witness of this casualty. Hannam was wounded by a [pice] of shell which almost severed the left leg, during the attack at Gaudecourt on Feb.21st/17. He died at the dressing station about 1 and a half hours after being wounded Cpl Mayne and I (both of 45th) buried him at rear of Parados near where he fell. We put a identity mark on the grave. He was about 5'6", med:build, fair 20 or 21 years." The trip through the Somme Battlefields was bizarre - there were so many cemeteries in the middle of nowhere. Every mile or so we would pass a field where smack in the middle was an immaculately kept memorial to people from some distant country.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. After the gravitas of the Somme, we took the train from Albert to Paris ... for the day. Here we are stuffing our faces after walking the VERY long Champs Elysees to view the Arc D'Triomphe (which was sadly barricaded from the world by much fencing). After lunch we queued to visit L'Orangerie, purpose built to house Monet's waterlily series. Following that, Jane managed to squeeze in climbing halfway up La Tour Eiffel (whilst Mum and I found a place to collapse for a while).