Tag Archives: world war 2

Friday 2nd April 2021 – IT’S BANK HOLIDAY …

… today. Good Friday – the day that follows Maundy Thursday, which presumably follows Sheffield Wednesday. And so I had a lie-in and didn’t surface until about 10:30.

Mind you, I didn’t go to bed until 02:30 this morning. And that wasn’t a wasted time either because I spent the couple of hours when I couldn’t sleep working on today’s batch of photograph and probably did about 20 of them too before I went to bed.

Plenty of time for me to go off on one of my travels. Abd hello, Rhys. It’s been a while since you’ve been on a nocturnal voyage with me. I was on a holiday with a group of people and part of this holiday involved a train trip across the USA. There was the opportunity to step out from this train ride for 24 hours and catch the train the following day so I made arrangements to meet Rhys. The train pulled into the station and I climbed out. A couple of other people climbed out as well and went their separate ways. I was waiting because I couldn’t see Rhys’s car. In the meantime I had my rucksack and everything so I took a photograph of the train. Then I noticed Rhys sitting in the bar with a pint of beer in front of him. We said “hello” and he got up to go. I said “no, we don’t have to go – get your drink, drink your beer”. he replied that it wasn’t his beer but the beer of a friend of his. He’d bought it though. Anyway so we came out and started to get my stuff. I had the idea that I would follow him in Caliburn because for some reason Caliburn was there. Then I thought that I didn’t have the insurance on Caliburn so it probably wasn’t a very good idea. We got my stuff and threw it into Rhys’s car. He asked “are you staying the night with us?”. I replied “I don’t have any plans at all” which was quite true. The train was a steamer and had a huge load of freight, oil tankers, that kind of thing on the front of it before you reached the passenger accommodation which was at the rear of the train.

After I’d had my medication I came in here and transcribed the dictaphone notes and then finished off today’s photographs. There was a break for breakfast of course.

With it being Easter I’d dragged out a pack of frozen Hot Cross Buns from the freezer. They’ll keep me going for the Easter period. After all, Easter isn’t Easter without Hot Cross Buns. A big thank you to Liz and Terry for bringing them to me from the UK at Christmas.

When I’d finished the photos I had to go back again and amend some of them. For some reason that I have yet to understand, I never synchronised the times on the two cameras that I was using.

With being in the car now, I’m using the NIKON 1 J5 much more than I did before while I was in the Arctic and there’s a one-hour difference between the time on that camera and on the big NIKON D500.

What’s happening is that I’m editing a batch of photos on one camera and suddenly discovering that I’ve missed a batch off the other, so I have to go back and do some renumbering in order to keep everything in sequence.

But anyway, now they are in proper order to date, I’m now heading down a dirt-track road near the border between Montana and Wyoming looking for the site of the Battle (if you can call it that) of Powder River in 1876.

After that I started again on the arrears of my Central European trip last year. By the time that I knocked off there are just another 12 photos for which I need to write the text, and then it’s all done and I can turn my attention to the trip on Spirit of Conrad down the Brittany coast.

There was a break of course while I went off on my afternoon walk around the headland.

This particular guy down there on the beach is very well camouflaged and it’s difficult to pick him out amongst the rocks down there.

But I don’t blame him at all for being wrapped up like that because while the sun was bright and there were very few clouds, we were back with the wicked wind again and the temperature must have dropped 15 degrees since yesterday. There weren’t any people out there sunning themselves on the beach and I wasn’t surprised at all about that.

It might be a Bank Holiday in the UK but it isn’t in France so the schools are still in and there weren’t all that many people wandering around. I had the path on top of the cliffs pretty much to myself this afternoon as I wandered along.

But while there weren’t so many people walking around on the ground, there was a lot of activity going on in the air.

As I was walking along the path I heard a very familiar noise in the air and, sure enough, a minute or two later an autogyro flew past overhead. I was expecting it to be our old friend the yellow one but in fact it’s one that I’ve never seen before – a bright red one. A different one, unless it’s the yellow one that’s been repainted.

She’s probably on her way to the airport at the back of Donville les Bains, although I’ve no idea where it is that she will have come from. She never seems to file a flight plan and flies so low that she’s underneath the radar.

Across the lawn I went, via a different route today that took me across the ruins of a bunker that housed 15 German soldiers during World War II.

What caught my eye was the wire meshing in the roof that reinforced the concrete that they had poured for the roof. It’s a good heavy duty stuff probably about 10mm in diameter and would withstand most things when set in concrete.

The construction of the Atlantic Wall was supposed to be Hitler’s great secret but what he didn’t realise was that he was betrayed by this even right at the very beginning. The company that had the contract for supplying the concrete was a Belgian company that was run by a guy who was actually a Secret Agent for the Russians, so he told the Russians and they told the British.

Of course the British never let on that they knew, because to admit that the Communists had helped them would have been a terrible thing to do, and it wasn’t until the British wartime papers were released in 1994 that the world knew about it.

As if the autogyro wasn’t enough, while I was there standing on the roof of the bunker an aeroplane flew past overhead.

This one is F-HGSM, Robin Dr400-160. She is owned by the Aero Club Des Grèves de Mont St Michel and took off from Rennes Airport at 11:49 this morning. She disappeared off the flight radar when she was half-way along the route to Granville so I imagine that she’s been doing a little bit of low-flying exercises as well.

Having photographed the plane I walked down to the end of the headland to see what was going on out in the bay. But the answer to that was “nothing at all” so I headed off along the path on top of the cliffs down towards the viewpoint overlooking the port.

Here was something extremely interesting.

There was a lorry parked down there with a pile of chains in the back. And there was this pallet-lifter nearby, and another small pile of chains on the ground at the back of the lorry. It looks as if the new mooring chains for the harbour have arrived at last and the pallet-lifter is taking them out of the back of the lorry.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw at least one of the diggers being taken away by a lorry. Today, it seems that both of them have gone now. I wonder if they will be back after the Easter Holiday.

The diggers might have gone from the harbour but most of the fishing boats are still here, tied up at the pontoons.

Now idea why they weren’t out working today. There was plenty of wind but the seas weren’t all that rugh so I would have expected them to have been out working.

The two Channel Island ferries, Victor Hugo and Granville are still in there tied up. They won’t be going anywhere for a good while yet, and not at all if the Channel Islanders refuse to put their hands in their pockets and contribute towards the subsidy to keep the ferries running.

And one of the Joly France boats is over there too. There must be nothing going on at the Ile de Chausey either.

Back here there was football on the internet. A really important match in the Welsh Premier League between Penybont and Haverfordwest County. This is the last weekend in the first half of the season. The League splits into 2 after this weekend – the top 6 compete for the four European places and the bottom 6 compete to avoid the two relegation places.

These two clubs were 6th and 7th in the league and whoever won would go into the top half and whoever lost would be in the bottom 6. From the kick-off it was quite clear that Penybont would win this – barring accidents of course. They were fitter, keener, much more organised and played the ball around between themselves with much more skill and confidence.

And I was right too. The final score of 2-0 to Penybont was exactly what I would have expected from the play. The only surprise was that Penybont were as low in the table as 6th because they looked much better than that today.

While I was eating my tea – more of those soya nuggets – I was at a party. My friend Esi was having a Zoom party and I’d been invited. It was nice to see her, even if it was via the computer, because we haven’t met since Christmas.

And while I was washing up, I dropped and broke a storage jar. I’m not having much luck with that.

So now I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow at Noz and Leclerc so I need to be on form. I won’t be having another lie in until Sunday and Monday. Can I survive until then?

Thursday 4th June 2020 – THAT WAS PROBABLY …

… the worst day that I have had today for a couple of years.

It didn’t get off to a very good start either. I eard the three alarms go off but I was in no real mood to make a hurried exit from the bed seeing as I was going out for the day.

07:35 was rather later than intended, but nevertheless …

During the night I’d been on my travels too. I was in some kind of Institution and the virus was taking a grip. I was interested in learning how to do different stuff from different people like bread making, that kind of thing. And this continued on and on and you don’t really want to read the rest of it because you probably are eating your meal right now.

For a change I had some breakfast and then a shower, and headed off to LIDL for the mid-week shopping.

Despite being in Caliburn, there wasn’t any heavy stuff that needed buying or anything really exciting in the special offers either. Mind you, there was quite a queue to go into the shop – just 20 people at a time being allowed in.

Having done the necessary I drove off to Laurent’s place at Bréhal Plage and we went off together for a drive.

Not as many photos as I would have liked to have taken. But that’s because, quite simply, when someone else is doing the driving you’re pretty-much dependent upon them and their time more than anything else.

Our first stop was at Flamanville right up the coast near Cherbourg.

But before I say anything about it, I was distracted … “as usual” – ed … by something offshore. It’s been an absolute age since we’ve had a “ship of the day” on these pages and so the presence of a large one sailing by about 10 miles or so offshore immediately caught my eye.

Of course at this kind of distance it was impossible to see its name, but its silhouette bears a great reemeblance to that of Commodore Clipper, the shuttle ferry that runs between the Channel islands anf the Uk mainland and ideed she did leave St Peter Port in Guernsey about 20 minutes before I took this photo.

As for where Guernsey might be, the answer to that is that it’s right there. The island of Sark is there too, but that’s lost in the background of the larger island.

Where we are is at the head of a peninsula right up near the top of the Cotentin Peninsula, very close to the port of Dielette and it’s from here in the summer that there’s a ferry service over to the Channel islands.

Not right now, of course, because everything is postponed while we all recover from the virus.

It’s usually Granville that provides the summer service over there, because judging by the look of the port at Dielette, Victor Hugo is too large to go a-manoeuvring around in there.

The ferries run a shuttle service from here to the various Channel Islands. That’s Jersey over there, a mere 40 or so kilometres away, much closer of course than it is to the port of Granville.

So it looks as if Dielette is the place for me to come in the summer to go on a nautical excursion if I can’t hitch a lift on Normandy Trader or Thora

The weather was pretty grey and miserable today, which was a shame. Not the ideal day for photography.

Nevertheless, down there on the horizon in a faint grey wisp is the coast of Brittany, which according to my calculations is a very improbable 90 kms away. But there’s no other land anywhere else out there in that vicinity so I can’t even begin to think what else it might be.

It could, I suppose be wishful thinking, the same kind of thinking that led the sailors of Christopher Columbus to believe on a couple of occasions that they had seen land before they finally espied San Salvador, but it looks pretty realistic to me

There was a floating buoy just offshore, but I reckon that I know the reason for this.

Where we are (although you can’t see it) is at the side of the big nuclear reactor at Flamanville. This is France’s equivalent of New Brunswick’s Lepreau Reactor, in that no matter how much money they throw at it and how many technicians then send in to wotk at it, they still can’t make it fire up correctly.

To be fair, the original two reactors from the 1980s seem to work fine and at one stage they were producing as much as 4% of the total amount of France’s electricity without any major problem. A third reactor was commissioned in 2007, with an on-line date of 2012 and a cost of €3.3 billion.

However one catastrophe after another has pushed the start date further and futther back, with a latest date being 2022 and with costs now rising to €12.4 billion. And none of that is certain to be the final position either.

It makes people wonder at just what stage will these people finally throw in the towel and stop throwing good money in after bad money.

We drove from there all the way along the coast on the “Route des Caps” as far as it was possible to go by car – to the harbour at Goury La Hague at the Cap de la Hague.

This is another place that I will add onto my list of places to come another time when I have visitors because even in the most miserable weather it was really nice. This little harbour here would look beautiful when the tide is in and all the boats ar bobbing about on the waves.

But I couldn’t help thinking that that is a massive wall to protect such a small harbour.

Regardless of the despressing weather, this woman here seemed to be njoying herself.

She had her notebook out and was busy painting a scene of the local landscape while her dog sat patiently close by.

This is a beautiful building just here on the quayside and Laurent asked me if I could guess its purpose. After a few moments thought I had to donner ma langue au chat as they say around here

Apparently it’s the local lifeboat station.

And what is interesting about it is that it’s a roundhouse. There are two slipways, one behind the harbour wall and the other one straight down into the sea.

The lifeboat is on a turntable on the inside and depending on what the weather is doing and where the tide is, the turntable is moved round so that the lifeboat is launched down the most appropriate slipway

And it’s hardly surprising that you need a lifeboat in a location like this.

This is the view down the slipway that goes directly into the sea. There are enough rocks just offshore to put the wind up anyone. And talking of wind there was plenty of that today too.

The green and red posts in the water tothe left are, I reckon, to mark the entrance to the little harbour there. “Green” has five letters so that means “right” – you keep that to your right as you are coming in. “Red” is the same colour as “port”, which has the same number of letters as “left”, so you keep that to your left.

Had the weather been better, the view from here would probably have been better as well.

Nevertheless we could see a long way down the coast all the way past “La Roche” down to the Falaise – or cliff – de Jobourg. And looking at that cliff answered a question of mine – namely, why would there have been the signs of the école d’escalade – the School of Climbing – that I had noticed as we had driven throught the town of Jobourg to reach here.

Well, now we know, of course. One look at that rock face right down there tells us everything.

That’s the Cap de La Roche and behind it to the left is another industrial complex of eerie significance.

It’s the site of France’s answer to Sellafield, and where all of the country’s nuclear waste – altogether more than half of the World’s capacity – is stored ready for whenever they discover a method of disposing of it.

Laurent had always wondered why they had chosen that particular site, and of course I was able to tell him. The prevailing winds in this area come up the English Channel from the south-west, and there is no French land whatever anywhere in the direction to which they will be blowing.

Any leak of radioactive material whatsoever will be blown out to sea by the prevailing winds and make landfall somewhere over the south-east coast of the UK.

There are some more rocks out there in that direction too, with that beautiful marker light perched on top of them to warn shipping.

The island behind it is the island of Alderney, the most northerly of the Channel Islands. These of course are British possessions which remained in English hands after the English were expelled from Normandy in 1204 for the simple reason is that the French King at the time didn’t have a fleet handy at the time to go along and invade them.

By the time that subsequent French Kings had arranged a Navy, the opportunity had been passed by and the islands had been reinforced ready to repel any invader.

The French Kings might have been forestalled, but others were not. In one of the most shameful incidents of World War II the British Government surrendered the Islands and their population to the Germans in 1940 without even firing a bullet in their defence.

Furthermore, even though the fighting had long-since passed them by, the British did not go along and claim them back from the Germans until after the end of the war. Hundreds of British citizens had died in the Concentration Camp on Guernsey or had been deported to places like TITTMONING, WHICH WE HAVE VISITED, Buchenwald or even Auschwitz, and the starvation of the citizens during the winter of 1944-1945 when the island was blockaded by the British caused hundreds of deaths.

Anyone who talks about hos “The British Won The War” needs to be reminded that without the help of the Americans they didn’t even dare to fight the Germans on their own soil until any danger of the German fighting back had been removed.

This here is a symbolic photograph.

It’s basically the final point of French territory around here – the lighthouse at the end of the Cap de la Hague. And a lighthouse is needed here too because of all the rocks that we have seen littering the area that will catch many a mariner totally unawares.

And shipwrecks just here are legion too – even big ships like the 10,000 tonne Button-Gwinnett that ran aground on the rocks on 19th December 1947 as well as any number of smaller vessels and pleasure boats that round the headland straight into a contrary current.

As well as shipwrecks on the shore, there have been innumerable accidents just off the coast too with collisions in the narrow navigable seaway.

This cross commemorates the crew of the French submarine Vendemiaire. She was built in 1910 when sumarines were in their infancy and submarine tactics were relatively unknown and untried.

On the 8th of June 1912 the three submarines of the Cherbourg flotilla were sent out to practise an interception on a few ships of the French navy that were steaming up the Channel. For some unknown reason the ships failed to co-ordinate their manoeuvre and the warship Saint Louis struck Vendemiaire amidships, sending her straight to the bottom taking all of hercrew with her.

Her wreckags was discovered in 2016 about 70 or so metres down, off the north-east coast of Alderney and the gash in her side was clearly visible, exposing her interior.

This photo was one that I took for my friend Louise.

She has a “thing” about useless gates, and while this isn’t a uselass gate it’s one of the next best things – a useless stile. I’m not sure at all why this would be there.

By now I was feeling really ill and the drive back to laurent’s was extremely uncomfortable for me. When we reached his house, I simply said my goodbye and drove home

Back here, I crashed out on the chair, and was gone for several hours. When I awoke, I was feeling even worse so I did something that I haven’t done for a couple of years and which I vowed that I would never do again, and that was to go and crash out on the bed.

And off I went on a long, confusing voyage. I was on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again. I was friendly with a couple who had come on board ship – a young couple. They had been on all of the yoages and were making a season of it but what had happened was that after the first couple of voyages they’d moved to the other side of the ship. When I encountered them later on they had had to move back. I asked them why and they told me “well the steward on the first side of the ship they were on was not very friendly so they wanted a nicer steward so they had moved across but they had no idea why it was they they had had to move back. We were chatting and by this time I was in Montreal and there I was wandering around in this shop like a big restaurant place. They had all these foods and sweets laid out where you could help yourself. I was wandering around trying to find something there to eat but there was nothing to eat for me. I was having a look at the sweets as well but there were no mint sweets of any kind that I could eat. I felt really bad about that. Then I was off again wandering around Montreal looking at an apartment. When I saw the rent, which was about 24,000 per year I thought that maybe I wouldn’t do that. But it was a nice lovely place down by the river. I was wandering around through the town and there was this abandoned car. The rear end was missing off it and the front end had been smashed and the engine was missing – a red one. I was wondering about the logistics of how I was going to stay – whether I could get a car, whether I could get a drivers’ licence, how much it would cost to get a driver’s licence on the Black Market, all kinds of stupid things like that
There was one instance where something was involved with firearms. I had a firearm which was not like me. Someone else had one and an issue came about that. I showed my firearm and this guy asked me all kids of weird and wonderful questions about it so I took the bullet and showed him the bullets. I quickly grabbed his and pulled his bullets out of his gun. They were a different type so I said something like “you have no room to talk about bullets” but this guy then turned to start talking about hunting which was not what I was trying to do at all.

Someone called me at sometime – I’ve no idea who because I didn’t answer. I was dead to the world and that was that.

No danger of me ever moving again.

Sunday 3rd February 2019 – WHAT A GORGEOUS …

… afternoon it was today.

Beautiful and sunny, not too windy, not too cold. And hordes of people wandering around outside. Round about 15:00 I joined them and went for a good walk. I didn’t make it back until 17:30.

All around the headland, down into town, around the harbour, back into town and then back here. And had the ice-cream stall that sells vegan sorbets been open, I would have treated myself to the first ice-cream of the year.

Now, with having an early night last night, and nice fresh bedding too, that I would have had a deep, relaxing sleep. But unfortunately not. Round about 02:40 I had another massive attack of cramp and I was in total agony. I just couldn’t ease it off and ended by standing up and trying to stretch my leg.

All in all, it took about half an hour until the pain would ease up enough that I could go back to bed. But any chance of going back to sleep was long-gone. I was awake for hours until I finally slipped away.

But I must have gone to sleep at some time, because I was off on my travels.

I was in a some kind of weird pub last night – some pub not too dissimilar to the one next to the old Town Hall in Crewe. All dirty, run-down and very basic. And I was waiting for someone there. I’d actually booked a room in a hotel a couple of miles outside the town. But a couple came in to the pub and said that they had a room booked there, so the landlord showed them up. As this couple looked quite respectable, I wondered what the rooms were like so I asked the landlord to show me a room. He took me upstairs, and the room was dreadful. A really bad 1960s-type of room with about 10 beds crammed in any old how, with heavy plush bed coverings and really looking in the worst possible taste. I didn’t even hang around to see if it was clean and damp-free. I just made an excuse about it obviously being out of my price range and walked out.
Later on, I was on board the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again. We were going to have a meeting about our journey and to sum everything up, but it was postponed. A very short while later, I was reading a newspaper on board ship, and it gave an “account” of this meeting, clearly written in advance of the meeting in anticipation of it taking place. To my surprise, the person who had written it was an old comrade of mine at the Open University and he had written quite a lot about my role in the voyage, blowing it up to well beyond what it really was, and putting a link in to my blog where readers could read so much more about it. However, the editor had edited out the url of the blog which disappointed me greatly.

08.40 when I finally awoke, but that’s not the same as saying that I was up and about. Much more like 09:30, or even 10:00 when I put my sooty foot on the floor.

Breakfast was even later. Much later too.More like an early lunch. I wasn’t in any hurry. I had a nice relaxing morning doing the usual Sunday task of badger all.

Feeling a little peckish later, I made some cheese on toast. And that reminded me about my pie. I must do something about that later.

When I went out for my walk, I had a good look around, and saw a couple of things that I hadn’t noticed before.

There were four or five of these floats bobbing up and down just offshore, and each float was different. I’ve no idea what they are doing out there, and I’m convinced that I have never seen them before.

While I was photographing the floats, I was distracted by an aeroplane flying overhead.

This aeroplane is a Bolkow Bo-208C Junior apparently, a type that I haven’t noticed before. And it’s quite interesting because the Bolkow company was the successor to the legendary Messerschmitt aircraft company of Luftwaffe fame.

It’s amazing what is out there once you start to look for it.

Talking of things being out there if only you look for them, the air was so clear that there was an excellent view of Jersey today.

So cropping out a selection of an image, blowing it up, which I can do despite modern anti-terrorist legislation, and enhancing the colours, you can see some of the houses and other buildings dotted along the coastline of the island.

It’s hard to believe that that’s almost 60 kms (35 miles) away. But then that’s all thanks to the big zoom lens that I bought in October.

In the other direction, looking down the Baie de Mont St Michel, the view was just as good.

Going as far out as I could, I still couldn’t see the Mont itself and the buildings thereupon. But the big hotel complex just a few hundred yards away from the Mont is clearly visible.

To give you some idea of perspective, that’s about 30 kms (18 miles) away as the crow flies.

And so back from my walk, I started by making another rice pudding.

While that was cooking, I fried a couple of leeks and onions with a few mushrooms and a tin of flageolet beans. When it was all thoroughly cooked, I added the tofu mix from yesterday, thoroughly stirred it in and heated it all through.

While I was waiting for the mixture to cool down, I prepared a pizza and stuck that in the oven to cook;

While the pizza was cooking, I took out a roll of pastry from the oven. It had dried and cracked so I had to wet it slightly and roll it. Good job that I had bought my rolling pin a while ago.

After it had been rolled, I greased a pie dish and put the pastry in. Added the pie filling and then folded over the excess pastry.

The pizza came out of the oven and the pie went in. I also added the rice pudding so that it would cook further.

The pizza was delicious, although it could have benefited from a longer period in the oven, and so was the rice pudding. The pie looks really good and I can’t wait to try it.

There was just me outside tonight for my evening walk. It wasn’t really cold and wasn’t really windy. It sounds very good after the beautiful day but I bet that there’s more winter to come.

The tide was still on its way out by the looks of things but nevertheless there was a good photo of the wves rolling up and down the beach at the Plat Gousset just by the Casino

So now I’ll try yet again for an early night. And hopefully a good sleep, without an attack of cramp. I need it.

And I’ve just found out that we are going to have a visitor tomorrow. Neptune has just turned into the bay up by Cherbourg and there’s only one place where she will be going.

floats granville manche normandy france

st helier jersey granville manche normandy france

cabanon vauban pointe de carolles mont st michel granville manche normandy france

old military buildings pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

old military buildings granville manche normandy france

atlantic wall world war 2 bunker granville manche normandy france

trawler undergoing repair chantier navale granville manche normandy france

boat lift chantier navale granville manche normandy france

port de granville harbour manche normandy france

port de plaisance granville harbour manche normandy france

chemin de la roche gauthier granville manche normandy france

st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

speedboat st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

ullouville granville manche normandy france

speedboat st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

rue st gaud granville manche normandy france

old crane port de granville harbour manche normandy france

art deco building rue du port granville manche normandy france

marite port de granville harbour granville manche normandy france

Monday 14th January 2019 – NEW KITS ON THE BLOCK

On my evening walk around the old medieval town this evening I was accosted by a little tabby kitten sitting on a windowledge.

I don’t recall having seen this one before. But it’s small, young and very playful and even let me pick it up for a while.

And that’s not the only thing that’s new on the block either.

There was a phone call at about 10:00. “Which is your door?”
“Never mind – I’ll come down”

So down I went just in time to see a big van pull up outside in the street. And two minutes later I was staggering up the stairs with a huge box.

That’s right – the new computer has arrived.

It took quite a considerable amount of unpacking too – with protective devices everywhere inside it, all of which had to be removed.

The machine is quite attractive, but I’m not going very much by aesthetics. I want it to work and work well. Laptops are all well and good for what they are but there is nothing like a big powerful desktop machine.

It was just as well that he phoned up at about 10:00, because had he done so very much earlier there might have been a problem.

Despite having gone to bed at a reasonable time, I was wide-awake at 03:50, and just couldn’t go back to sleep.

Not for ages anyway. I was tossing and turning around for quite some considerable time before I could finally drop off. And then the alarm went off, I just couldn’t haul myself out of bed, and went back to sleep. It was more like 08:45 when I finally took my courage in my hands and surfaced.

I’d been on my travels too. Some old guy had been a professional diver and had been involved in a great many professional treasure hunts. He was now long-retired and was actually 102 and reckoned himself to be close to death. He wanted to do just one very last dive before he went the way of the west so went down to a place where he had been treasure-hunting on many occasions but with no success. So down he went, and at the very last moment he actually managed to find a heavy chain hidden in the silt that led to where the treasure was hidden.

This morning I finished off the uploading of data onto the external drive and then we had the interruption for the delivery of the computer.

After lunch, I started to configure the new computer. And I’ve already found one problem. The antenna on the wi-fi isn’t strong enough to pick up the fluctuating signal. It fades in and out too much. I’m either going to have to move the transmitter or else go for a cable hook-up.

But apart from that, it works about 10 times faster than the laptop did. And the image is so much clearer too.

There was the usual afternoon walk too.

My route was, as usual, around the Pointe du Roc. And there parked outside one of the old gun emplacements of the Atlantic Wall, were a couple of World War II jeeps.

I’ve heard a story that they might be reopening a couple of bunkers to make some kind of tourist attraction here, and so I’m wondering if these jeeps and the people with them have anything to do with that.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with potatoes and veg.

Later this evening, the evening walk around the walls was done in total solitude. Not a soul about in the streets except for my kitten of course.

But the air and the sky were quite clear and you could see for miles tonight.

Jersey stood out quite clearly and you could see the lights of St Helier quite easily on the horizon.

There were also the floodlights of three or four trawlers working out to sea.

I don’t recall if I have taken a photo of the rue Clemenceau just recently.

With it being such a clear, calm night I stopped and took a photo of it to add to my database of images.

And on that note, I turned tail and headed for home – stopping to give my kitten a little stroke on the way.

So while the new computer is busy uploading a huge pile of files, I’m going to bed. I’ll have to try to do better tomorrow.

night st helier jersey granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 18th September 2018 – AND SO I WENT …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

… to bed quite early (and missed all of the excitement too!) and crashed out almost immediately. The record that I was playing Colosseum Live … "now THERE’S a surprise" – ed … was still playing when I briefly awoke, so I quickly turned that off and fell back into the Arms of Morpheus.

It didn’t take me long to go off on my travels and a big Hello! to The Vanilla Queen who made her debut. “Vanilla Queen” indeed, living up to her alter ego! The stress is clearly getting to me, that’s for sure.

With having to be up and about so early I was awake at about 04:30. And again at about 05:15. I couldn’t go back to sleep after that and so I Arose from the Dead and started to tidy up and pack.

We’ve now entered Kangerlussuaq, the “Big Fjord” and so I took a few photos. No sunrise today unfortunately and not really all that much else to see. So I toddled off to breakfast where I had a lengthy chat with Dave about Glasgow and GreenocK. Heather came to join us too for a short while.

Afterwards I finished packing my possessions and then I had to wait around for ages to see what was happening.

Before I could check out. We received a USB stick with all of the voyage details thereupon, and I was able to go back upstairs to upload the photos of Strawberry Moose in his kayak.

Eventually we were called down to the zodiacs and were transported to the shore. We passed by Linda, the cruise director, and I’m afraid that I couldn’t resist it. I said to her “I suppose you’ll give me that e-mail address tomorrow”.

I really am wicked! But serve her right.

A fleet of buses was awaiting us – some modern monstrous machines and also a couple of really elderly vehicles, including a Kassböhrer-Setra and, much to my surprise, a DAB-bodied 1984 Leyland bus.

We went past the ruins of Kellyville, an old American radar base and then up the hill to the old American submarine radio base. Long-since dismantled, you could see how tall the antennae must have been by reference to the concrete base and the size of the cable stays. They were massive.

Much to my surprise the diesel generators were still present – a couple of really old straight-eights. I was about to give them a good look-over but before I could do so we were summoned back to the bus.

Back down the hill again and past the cupola for the gun that defended the port installations and the runway for the airstrip at Kangerlussuaq in World War II. In (and out) of the town to look at the Pride and Joy of the urban area – the new bridge that replaced the one that was washed out in an ice-flood in 2012.

We were told of the volume of water that passes through the bridge at the height of the melt-water season and I can’t remember now what our driver said it was but it was certainly impressive. Today we had a floating plaque of ice that was jammed up against the culvert with all of the water passing underneath.

He showed us the site of the old bridge and explained that if we were to dig down in the collapsed morass we would probably be able to recover a digger that was swept away in the confusion.

Up to the top of the mountain on the other side.

There was a beautiful view of Kangerlussuaq from the top, as well as the old radio and radar installations from the Cold War. Some of the equipment is now utilised by the Danes to pick up the data that is transmitted from weather satellites that pass overhead.

And I found some beautiful glacier-polished rock right on top of the mountain. It looked really splendid.

Back down to the airport – the largest in Greenland with the longest runway – another Cold War legacy. Plenty of time to kill before take-off so I went to watch the Air Greenland planes take off. This is the only airport in which the big jets can land so they unload and turn round here and there are endless shuttles of smaller planes that feed the passengers in and out and on and beyond.

I took the opportunity to eat my packed lunch too. Not that it took me all that long. Laszlo and I clearly have different ideas about the size of my appetite.

Still hordes of people congregating around so I spent quite a while chatting to Sherman, Michael, Christopher and Tiffany. They were sharing out the crisps which I thought was quite nice of them.

Eventually we made our way to the departure lounge and I had another stand-off in what laughingly passes as “security”.

“Empty your pockets!” barked a woman with a badge.
“Would you mind saying ‘please’ to me when you address me” I replied.
This led to an extremely warm 5 minutes until she buckled under.

And now our plane is 90 minutes late. isn’t that a surprise? It’s so late that the second plane has in fact arrived first.

I thought that it would be absolutely awful watching the others depart before us, but they sat for half an hour on the tarmac without moving – and then the rood opened, the stairs came out and the pilot descended.

The cynic in me started to work out all kinds of depressing scenarios and in the words of JRR Tolkein “all are dark and unpleasant”.

We were later told a story of what had happened. Apparently some kind of aeroplane had come to some kind of grief on the runway. Our plane couldn’t land and so had flown back to Iqaluit.

But none of this explains why plane 2 had managed to land on the runway, and why another aeroplane from Air Greenland had managed to land. And why they hadn’t grabbed one of the towing dollies that I had seen in action earlier and yanked the plane off the runway.

20-odd years of working in the tourism industry has imbued me with a desperate sense of cynicism that will one day surely be my undoing. However, I am guided by the comment that “a cynic is someone who sees things as they are, not as they are meant to be”.

And seeing the n°2 aeroplane take off before our (earlier) one had landed did nothing to dispel my feelings.

The tour company offered us a meal of sorts. And after much binding in the marsh they managed to rustle up a salad for me. A blind man would have been pleased to see it, I suppose.

But the biggest laugh is yet to come.

After the meal they gave me a bottle of water – unopened and sealed – out or the restaurant so I strode back into the waiting area. And they wouldn’t let me pass with it and we had quite an argument about it.

But behind me were the tour managers with 200 of the identical bottles of water and they passed those into the security area, right enough. And so we had another argument about that too.

In the meantime, the clock in the waiting room had ceased to function. That’s always a handy stand-by when people are feeling the drag of waiting around. They don’t notice the passage of time if the clock isn’t working.

The plane finally arrived at about 20:35 – a good 15 minutes after the “latest update” time and well over 4 hours after its due DEPARTURE time. And in the meantime Sherwin had given us an impromptu concert to pass the time. One suspects that a certain well-filled brown envelope had changed hands at some point. We even had Latonia singing along.

And once the aeroplane had landed, they started up the clock again.

I really must develop a more positive attitude, as I have been saying for quite a while.

Departure time should have been 16:30. We took to the air at 22:15. That was me thoroughly depressed.

What depressed me even more was when I talked to the cabin crew. They told me that there had been a “maintenance issue” and that, together with the associated paperwork, had delayed the take-off

Clearly someone is being … errrr … economical with the truth somewhere.

And I felt really sorry for The Vanilla Queen. She lives in Iqaluit but was having to take the charter flight to Toronto, and then make her way home via Montreal. So where do you think that we stopped for a refuelling break?

Much to my surprise they actually did have a vegan meal on board. And even more surprisingly, it was quite reasonable too, as far as airline meals go.

But that was as good as it got. My good humour that had been slowly disappearing over the last few days – well, the last vestiges have disappeared into the ether now. As Doctor Spooner once famously said, “I feel like a hare with a sore bed”.

I tried to settle down to sleep but no chance of that. I shall have to stay wide-awake with only my good humour to keep me company.

I don’t think.

Saturday 7th July 2018 – ONE OF THESE DAYS …

… I’ll have a decent night.

But it wasn’t last night, that’s for sure. With all of the excitement following Belgium’s unexpected victory over Brazil there was chaos in the streets and enough noise to awaken the dead.

And so despite everything and all of my best intentions, it was hours before I managed to go off to sleep.

It was another morning too where I was awake long before the alarm went off. When I finally glanced at the time it was 05:47 and I was hoping for something rather better than that.

There had still been time to go on my travels though. Back driving a taxi and I’d been given a list of the regular clients which I was sure that I had memorised, and so I tore it up. And immediately there was a call over the radio “go to Nantwich and pick up so-and-so”. And I couldn’t remember where he or she lived. My notes were too badly torn to be able to be pieced together so I asked on the radio, but I couldn’t understand the reply which was rather garbled.
A little later I was in Eritrea (don’t ask me why) – an Eritrea that looked like nothing that I had ever seen of it. There was a military patrol walking down a road floating up observation balloons, many of which had fallen to earth and were littering the side of the road. Suddenly the patrol withdrew, leaving me isolated right out in front, a rather nervous place to be. Eventually I found a tourist guide who was selling tickets on a steam train ride. he was negotiating with someone and they agreed on a price of $50:00. The only thing that I could see in the brochure for a steam ride was at $130:00 so I asked about it. He replied that I needed to go to the railway station and book it there. He mentioned 13:30 but I didn’t understand if that was the time of departure or the time of return, and it was all so confusing.

So crawling out of bed I had my medication (now that I have some) but I still didn’t feel like any breakfast so I had a shower instead and cracked on with my paperwork.

The cleaner wanted to come in here at 11:00 but I told her to wait for a while as I was expecting a visitor.

And sure enough, just when I reckoned that I ought to go outside, I opened my door to see Alison pulling into the car park. Bang on cue.

Our first port of call was about 30 kms down the road in Welkenraedt.

Despite only having a population on 9,000 or so, it’s probably one of the most famous small towns in Belgium and it’s one that I’ve been dying to visit ever since I first came to Oostende over 45years ago

And for one of the strangest reasons too, because it’s not your usual run-of-the-mill tourist venue.

Back in the 1970s at the railway station in Oostende there would alwas be a train waiting to meet the ferries, and they would always be going to Welkenraedt.

It aroused my curiosity so I did a little research and found that it was a small town in the north of the Ardennes that didn’t look as if it had any significance at all, so I was puzzled as to why all of these trains would want to come here.

And when you look at the station, it’s a big, modern station that has plenty of facilities and it is all out of proportion to the size of the town

A little bit of research back in those days soon cleared up the question.

Welkenraedt is the closest railway station to the border between Germany and Belgium – in Germany until 1919 and in Belgium afterwards.

And when the railways were electrified, the German voltage system was different from that in Belgium until comparatively modern times. And until the Schengen agreement, there was a frontier post at the station.

So while the passengers were having their passports controlled, the train would be changing engines and then going on to Aachen or Cologne or maybe further still.

Welkenraedt is officially a German-speaking town but when it was transferred to Belgium by the Treaty of Versailles, the SNCB, the Belgian railway company, opened a locomotive depot here and transferred in a large number of French-speaking railway workers.

They flooded the town to such an extent that you will struggle to find German spoken here today. We saw a couple of signs in German but that was about that.

We went off to find something to eat as Alison was hungry, and I forced down a helping of overcooked chips. I’m clearly feeling better after my crisis of Thursday and Friday.

But you can’t cometo this region without going down the road to Moresnet.

For several reasons really, not the first of which is this absolutely gorgeous railway viaduct.

It’s not quite on a par with the Tracel de Cap Rouge of course, that’s rather exceptional, but it’s by far the best that you are likely to find around this part of Europe.

According to the information that I have found, it was built during the period 1915-1916. The pillars are fine examples of reinforced concrete of that period.

It’s just over 1100 metres long and at its highest, it’s about 60 metres above the velley of the River Gueule

That tells us a couple of things

There may well have been something here prior to that period that was demolished at the start of World War I
It escaped demolition during the fighting of World War II

Knowing my usual luck, we would ordinarily have had to wait for about three weeks to see a train pass over the viaduct, and then we would have missed it because we had gone for a coffee.

But that’s not the case here. This is the main railway line that runs between Aachen and Antwerpen, one of Europe’s busiest ports.

We’d hardly pulled into the village before a freight train went rattling by just above our heads.

So while you admire the village of Moresnet and Alison and I have gone for a coffee with the friendly young girl who runs the village café, let me tell you a little story.

At the end of the Napoleonic Wars the Treaty of the Limits in 1816 redefined the border between the Low Countries (because Belgium didn’t exist at that time) and the Kingdom of Prussia.

For various reasons, they couldn’t agree with what to do with the commune of Moresnet and so they planned to divide it between them.

Unfortunately, any logical dividing line ran right through a very important and valuable quarry and they couldn’t agree where the line should go so that each country would have half the value.

Eventually, they agreed that the quarry and a surrounding piece of land would be a neutral zone administered jointly by one official from the Low Countries (Belgium after 1830) and the Kingdom of Prussia (the German Empire after 1871).

And so you had Moresnet, Neu-Moresenet (the German bit) and Moresnet Neutre.

In 1914 Germany took all of it, so at the Treaty of Versailles Belgium was awarded all of it, so in 1940 Germany took it all back and in 1945 Belgium regained all of it.

There has been quite a lot of excitement in such a sleepy little Belgian village

But our conversation with the serving wench was quite exciting. being practically right on one of Belgium’s linguistic borders, our conversation drifted between French and German with hardly a pause.

Belgium is a fascinating country.

And if that’s not enough to be going on with, just up the road some time round about 1750 a miracle involving Mary the Mother of Jesus is said to have taken place

Pilgrims came to visit the site so a small chapel was built, followed by all of the usual facilities for the visitors, and the village of Moresnet-Chapelle developed.

A group of Franciscan Friars (and seeing as this is Belgium, they were probably chip monks) were sent from Aachen in 1875 to provide spiritual comfort to the visitors.

As a result, some substantial development took place.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve talked on several occasions about the Chemin de la Croix – 14 stages of Jesus on his way to his crucifixion, death and subsequent resurrection.

We’ve also been to see a a magnificent example of this at Cap de la Madeleine in Quebec.

In 1895 they decided that they would emulate it (the filthy beasts) right here.

In 1895 German benefactor provided some cash to purchase the land around the chapel and they set to work.

The work was completed in 1904 and today there are 14 grottoes made of puzzolane, each featuring one of the stages of the Chemin de la Croix.

The aim is to visit each one, purchase a candle to light in each (which must bring in a fortune) and say a prayer at each one, in order to be absolved of your sins.

Of course, I don’t need to, for regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous guises will recall that I was granted absolution by the Pope, having passed through all of the Holy Doors in Rome during the Period of Grace in 2000.

I choose my friends carefully as you know.

The twelfth station, the Calvaire or Calvary, featuring the crucifiction, is always a good ‘un and there’s no exception here.

In fact, it was so popular at one time that they have installed benches here and occasionally hold open-air church services here.

But clearly not masses, because the place is pretty-much deserted today.

And I shan’t bore you all by repeating the story that a Frenchman delightfully told me, that they asked for a famous sculptor from each country to send in their impressions of how the Calvary should look, and the Belgian sculptor sent in a drawing of John Wayne on his horse.

Final stop (for now, anyway) on our day out was just a couple of miles up the road.

Here we have the Driehoek – or “Three Corners” – where the countries of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet.

And when we had Moresnet-Neutre, it was a Vierhoek because that area had a bit of it too.

The girl in red is sitting half in the Netherlands and half in Germany, and the girl on the floor is half in the Netherlands and half in Belgium.

Not only that, the highest point in the Netherlands – the Vaalserberg – is only 100 metres or so from the border and so we had to pay that a visit too.

It’s all of 322.4 metres above sea level, or 1,058 feet for those of you still dealing in real money.

And in the background you can see an observation platform. Apart from the fact that it cost real money to go up there to the top, the number of steps that I saw was enough to put me off the idea.

So having been driven up the Vaal(serberg) our next stop was across in our third country of the day – Germany. And those silly Brits who voted to leave the EU just don’t understand the advantages of having Breakfast in Brussels, Lunch in Luxembourg, Tea in Turin, Supper in Sampdoria and Bed in Bari.

Aachen in fact was where we went, where Alison wanted to take me to a café that she had found. And even though we arrived 12 minutes before the advertised closing time of 18:00, they refused to serve us.

Consequently we nipped to Mullers for some of my white coconut chocolate, and then to the cat café that we had visited a while ago.

The cooking smelt delicious so Alison had some thick soup and I had hummus with raw vegetables and bread.

It’s not far back to Liège from Aachen, even though you pass through three countries to get there. and I was in time to see Russia defeated by Croatia. And I could tell by the way that the first Russian limped up to take his penalty, head bowed to the ground, that he was going to miss it.

Tomorrow I am on the move, and so an early night – if my neighbours let me. They are being just a little rowdy, but then you can’t win a coconut every time, can you?

-1

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 – WHERE’S THAT CONFOUNDED BRIDGE?

Yes, I’ve been on my travels again through the western Germany countryside, haven’t I?

And finding a certain bridge (or, rather, what remains of a certain bridge) is not easy when you don’t use your head.

But first, let’s return to the Hotel From Hell. Because it really was a bad night and I regret every moment that I spent there.

Yes, I’ve bombed spectacularly with this place.

Never mind checking the area to see about railway lines – this is the old station building that’s been converted into a guest house. So it’s right by a busy main-line railway.

And the shunting in the yard starts up at 04:00 in the morning, along with the accompanying warning sirens. If you’re a light sleeper like me, you can forget any notion whatever of having a decent sleep.

Closing the window didn’t help matters either because 5 minutes later the room was like an oven. And that was a shame because the room itself wasn’t too bad as budget rooms go.

But I did manage to go off on a few travels regardless.

We started off back at the taxi place where I have the Cortina LND9P. It was Sunday evening and I was awaiting the arrival of the radio operator – none other than our old friend TOTGA. And looking through the books I could see that we hadn’t turned a wheel since the previous Sunday when she was here. So I hoped that things would be better and pick up, or else I may as well close down.
Later, I was off to Stoke on Trent on a Saturday afternoon, with the plan being to visit a scrapyard. Saturday afternoons, as everyone knows, are really busy in scrapyards but this one was empty, no-one was about and all of the cars were overgrown with weeds. Of course, fewer and fewer people repair their own cars these days, and tighter pollution controls means that cars head off to the scrapyards themselves long before they are in need of any major repair.
Later still, we were on a big double-decker coach coming out of a French port, and up a steep hill on a gravel road. Our route took us up past a big camp site and then we disappeared into the rolling hills. At a certain moment we all alighted and the driver disappeared off with the bus. That gave us an opportunity to explore the area on foot. A crowd of us went through into some cave-type of places that were old lime-kilns and were stuffed with old French cars lying around abandoned and derelict. After we’d been talking for a while I drew the attention of someone in our party, a car enthusiast, to one kiln where there was a pale green Peugeot 403. He was so keen that I decided not to disappoint him by telling him of the even better ones he had missed. Two of us ended up walking in the hills and this was tiring me out. But the bus driver came to fetch me as he was having an argument in a garage and the proprietor didn’t understand him. He told me that the proprietor wanted to charge him for a whole ruck of repairs on the steering, but the driver had said that he had greased and oiled it himself and it was only minor adjustments that the garage had done. The proprietor said that the bill related to earlier work, and that rang a bell with me as I remembered the bus having to be suspended-towed in to the garage some time previously. And while we were discussing things, I went out for some fresh air and a walk, and there was another bus and an accident-damaged small lorry being towed into the garage.

Once the alarms went off I had a shower and settled down to write up last night’s note, but for one reason or another the hotel’s internet system wouldn’t accept the *.ftp procedures to upload the photos.

and my heart wasn’t much in it either after the bad night. 10:00 was checking-out time and the cleaner was knocking on the door to “encourage” me to leave.

Outside, not only was Caliburn still there but no-one had stolen his wheels. That’s one thing to be thankful for, I suppose. I was rather worried about that.

First stop was the river to see what was going on, driving past a B&B Hotel not 500 yards from where I stayed.

And you’ve no idea just how difficult it was to find my way down here too. There were roadworks everywhere and I couldn’t get to where I needed to be.

In the end I had to improvise something, and I ended up eventually on the industrial estate.

Here, I was treated to a nautical danse macabre by several barges.

You’ve no idea just how busy the Rhine is, and the amount of commercial traffic that’s flowing up and down it.

The UK’s only navigable commercial inland waterway, the Manchester Ship Canal, was closed down and a Shopping Centre built on Pomona Docks, but here in Germany, water transport plays a vital role in the economy.

The assemblies of delegates of the Holy Roman Empire were called “Diets” and several of those took place in the town of Worms which is just up the road from here.

The most famous Diet of Worms took place in 1521, when Martin Luther was summoned before the Assembly to defend several of his works that Pope Leo X

The Assembly ended with him being denounced as a dangerous heretic, but his demeanour at the Diet won him some very influential friends.

This gorgeous stone building here in the background is actually a gatehouse for the bridge that crosses the Rhine here.

Its style and immense size gives you some idea of the wealth and importance of the city in Medieval times.

It was a Free City of the Holy Roman Empire, its ruling Council being directly subordinate to the Emperor himself.

And river traffic is quite intense here too, with an endless stream of barges passing up and down the river.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a Ship Of The Day of course, but this would qualify as a Barge of the Day in anyone’s reckoning.

It’s loaded up with scrap and is pushing a lighter down in front of it which is likewise loaded. There can’t be much less than 1,000 tonnes on there – the equivalent of 30-odd lorries.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous incarnations will recall that we once went for a train ride up through the Ruhr, and noticed how all of the land at the side of the railway was still flattened and overgrown following the devastation of the allied bombing during World War II

Worms was a fortified stronghold of the German Army and as well as suffering from Harris’s indiscriminate bombing, was attacked twice in early 1945 by massive fleets of bombers in an attempt to force out the defenders.

In one attack, on 21st February, 334 bombers dropped an estimated 1100 tonnes of bombs on the city in just a couple of minutes.

It didn’t work, and the city didn’t fall until it was outflanked after the Crossing of the Rhine.

And just as in the Ruhr, I bet that this area around the cathedral looked totally different prior to the bombing.

The post-war Strategic Bombing Survey suggested that almost 40% of the city had been destroyed in the air attacks of 1945. Nearly 6500 buildings had been damaged or totally destroyed and several hundred civilians killed.

I stopped at the kaufland supermarket on the edge of Oppenheim to do some shopping, and back on the road I was held up at a level crossing.

It’s not easy photographing a moving target with the little Nikon as the lapse time is longer than i ought to be, but I managed to photograph some of an electric multiple unit on its way to Mainz.

And when I’m reunited with my Jane’s Train Recognition Guide I can tell you all about it

Now, have you any idea just how difficult it is to drive around Mainz?

Mainz is like three cities merged into one and if you forget in which order they are, you can drive aroundfor ever in an eternal loop.

What doesn’t help of course is The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav who has difficulty in understanding grade-separated junctions, and a new fault that she seems to have developed in that she doesn’t know her Cardinal Points.

Here I was with the river on my right-hand side and the sun behind me, so clearly heading north-ish, and she telling me that I’m going south-west.

After a while, I gave up and finding a little quiet corner down by the river, stopped for lunch.

Back on the road, after she had tried to send me down a public footpath and then three times round the same corner of the city while I tried to work my own way round a grade-separated junction, I did what I should have done first rather than last.

I picked up a road sign for Koblenz, which is on the river north of Mainz, and drove 10 miles down the motorway, making sure that the distance to Koblenz was decreasing, and then pulled off the motorway to find the river.

And the interchange was exciting too.

Remember me talking the other day about castle ruins in the middle of Germany? Here’s another not-quite-a-ruin just at the side of the motorway exit.

We’re now in the Rhine valley – the Gateway to Central Europe – and this area was fought over almost as much as Flanders and North-East France

Having rejoined the Rhine at Bingen am Rhein, we end up in the quaintly-named town of Bacharach.

We’ve seen all of the vines and grapes growing in the Rhine Valley, and just as in France, there are plenty of Chateaux here and there, just as in Bacharach, which are presumably the domains of the owners;

But I’m not keen on the colours of the parasols, I’ll tell you that.

It’s round about Bacharach that we start to meet the typical Rhine scenery too as the river begins to cut its course through the mountains.

This is the kind of view that you’ll see on any picture postcard of the Rhine, despite the fact that probably only 100 kms of its route passes through this sort of terrain.

You won’t ever see a picture postcard view of the docks at Ludwigshafen, that’s for sure.

We mentioned fortifications just now, and also the fact that the Rhine is the gateway to Central Europe.

It was consequently heavily-defended during the Middle Ages and castles and the like were erected at every conceivable strategic location to control the passage up the river.

One of the best has to be the castle that was built here on this island in the middle of the river near St Goar. No commercial traffic could pass up here without being within primitive cannon-range of the castle.

And that’s not the only castle here too.

There’s a fortified castle at the same location but in the hills on the western side of the river overlooking one of the meanders.

From this kind of viewpoint you can see for miles any traffic coming up and down the river and have your rowing boat ready to nip out and collect the tolls.

Being a landowner with a castle on the banks of the Rhine was a very profitable occupation, although it did usually attract the ire of the inhabitants of the towns situated up- and down-stream, often with exciting results.

And talking of excitement, we had some excitement in St Goar. A bunch of grockles decided that they would amble across the road at their own pace right in front of Caliburn, doubtless too busy listening for the Loreley than to pay attention tp oncoming traffic, and were most upset when I gave them “Hail Columbia” on Caliburn’s horn.

And during the resultant discussion, I never realised just how good my German actually was. It’s a long time since I’ve had to remind people just who lost the war and they should get out of the way of the victors.

Not that it’s the kind of thing that I usually do, but it’s much more pointed than telling them to **** off.

I blinked and missed Boppard – a horrible nasty place full of even more grockles, and continued northwards.

My journey brought me to the town of Rhens, of which the chief claim to fame is that it’s twinned with Barnsley in Yorkshire, for which I apologise.

It was also a fortified city in the Middle Ages and despite the warfare that has ravaged the area over the centuries, not the least of which was in March 1945, there are still some vestiges remaining.

There was also an old GPO red telephone box here too. everyone wants them except the Brits, it seems.

Koblenz received the same treatment as Boppard, mainly for the same reason but also due to the fact that it was now rush-hour.

Instead, I headed straight for my next destination, Remagen and the remains of its famous bridge.

For some reason, the bridge was quite difficult to find – as if a street called something like the “allee den Alten Rheinbruck” wouldn’t give me a clue.

In the end, I had to park up on the outskirts of the town and do some research.

But eventually I tracked down what remains of the bridge.

In World War II all of the bridges over the Rhine were packed with dynamite to demolish them should the need arise.

But following the premature explosion of another bridge when it was hit by a bomb and the subsequent court-martial of the officers commanding, the dynamite was removed, to be replaced when any enemy advance threatened the bridge.

By the time the Americans threatened the bridge, the only dynamite available was very substandard and not powerful enough to demolish the bridge. And in any case; some of the charges failed to explode.

And so it was still standing when the Americans arrived.

It didn’t fall until many days later, and then only due to the fanatical attacks by Luftwaffe bombing attacks and rocket barrages. But by then a pontoon bridge had been erected across the river.

Until the 1950s the pillars were still standing in the middle of the river but they were hazardous to shipping and were removed.

Its building had been proposed as part of the Schlieffen Plan for a rapid attack on France.

Linking the railways on the eastern bank of the Rhine with those on the western bank could speed up the deployment of troops and supplies.

And if you look very carefully, you can see the tunnel in the rock into which the railway disappeared.

Building took place between 1916 and 1919, too late to be of any real use in World War I

Bonn seemed to be the obvious choice for a place to stay, but I was wary after the budget hotel that I had had in Ludwigshafen.

So looking further afield I found much to my surprise that a hotel that I had seen earlier in Kripp, about 5 miles south of here and right on the banks of the Rhine, had a room with breakfast at just €53:00.

I’d been impressed by the look of that place, and so I reserved a room

On my way down back south we noticed another “Barge of the Day”

We’ve seen some impressively big container ships in our time, and although you won’t ever get them up the Rhine, this barge is impressive enough and shows you another example of the kind of freight that sails … “diesels” – ed … up here.

Having seen what I have seen of Germany’s economy and industry along the Rhine, long before we get to the Ruhr of course, it really is unstoppable and people living in the UK, where factories are being demolished and replaced by supermarkets selling imported goods, who think that they can compete with this are really totally out of their minds.

So now I’m esconsed in my little room. Small, and probably more at home in the 1970s (but then again, so am I) but there’s everything that I need just here and I even have a side-on view of the Rhine.

What more can any man desire – apart from Kate Bush and Jenny Agutter of course?

It was such a nice evening that I went for a walk outside later on.

Across the Rhine just here is the town of Linz and if you had been here in late March 1945 you would have had a completely different view than today.

Never mind the bomb and artillery damage – when the US engineers inspected the Ludendorf Bridge and declared it potentially unsafe, they constructed a pontoon bridge across the river at this point.

What we have today though is a car ferry, and that’s always going to be exciting news.

However, it’s not usually good news for Caliburn, Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly to see a car ferry, though.

We usually all end up in a bad mood, because a car ferry is that kind of thing that always makes us cross.

But we can see about that tomorrow. It’s bed-time right now.

Monday 16th April 2018 – I’M PAYING …

… €110 (well, €118 with taxes) for three nights in this hotel and I do have to say that I’ve not had such a good deal as this in most other places where I’ve stayed.

No breakfast of course at that price but I’ve brought my own, left over from the place in Leuven so that’s no big deal. But the bed was so comfortable for a cheap bed that I was out like a light and stayed out for quite a good while.

That didn’t stop me going on a midnight ramble though. I was in some kind of tower last night – a tower that was some kind of tourist attraction. Right at the top of it I was. But for some reason there was nothing that interested me and I was more interested in seeing how quickly I could descend to the ground. Old women, schoolgirls, families – nothing slowed me down and I was bowling them over like ninepins in my race to the bottom. Outside, I was just leaning on a fence in some kind of depression when I was tapped on the shoulder. Two people – a young man and his girlfriend – from his party were there and they were desperately trying to cheer me up – telling me about all of the machinery that was still in this mill and how there were a couple of big old engines in the cellar that were used to manufacture electricity. But nothing seemed to haul me out of my depression.

Nothing seemed to haul me out of my stinking pit either. After all of the exertions of yesterday I was aching in places that I didn’t even realise that I had, and I thought that my fitbit was really taking the mickey when it told me that “your activity yesterday will really benefit your health”.

After our usual morning performance I had breakfast and then, shame as it is to admit it, I closed my eyes and was away with the fairies for at least half an hour. I definitely did too much yesterday.

But you can’t keep a good man down for long – nor me neither for that matter – and I was out on the streets again.

Off on a walk down to the Delhaize supermarket for some shopping and a baguette for lunch. I have to eat;

And this is the kind of thing that would bring tears to the eyes of many single women. I’m not quite sure of the purpose of this display but it was certainly interesting from an aesthetic point of view.

And we had yet another delightful scene in here too – of a woman weighing the punnets of strawberries (clearly labelled 500 grammes) to find out which one had the most in it. I thoroughly despair of the human nature that is within some people.

Back here I had a few things to do and then I made my butties for lunch and hit the streets yet again.

But not very far – just outside the hotel where the people who run the bar opposite were unloading stuff from their van.

And you only need to look at the corrugated bonnet to tell you that this is one of the earliest generations of 2CV vans. And that makes it something of a rare beast. you don’t see too many of the cars of this generation about these days (although regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we do know someone who has one) never mind the vans.

In fact, thinking about it, with the Healey 3000 on Saturday, the Ponton last night and now the 2CV, I’ve seen more interesting vehicles this last three days than I have over the last three months.

Having dealt with the 2CV, my route took me along the promenade again in the general direction of the railway station.

And past some very interesting works going on down on the beach with them building a sort-of lego wall there on the right to stop the sand drifting over the new causeway that they had built a couple of years ago.

And there was some piling work going on at the end of the older, previous causeway that was the harbour mouth. So it looks as if the work on the modernisation of the harbour is going to be going on and on.

It’s always a bad idea for me to see a ferry. I get in such a bad mood because, of course, every time I see a ferry it makes me cross.

And of course there is a free ferry from near the aquarium that goes across the harbour to the commercial side of the docks where there are many of the fortifications still remaining from World War II, and also from World War I when Oostende was an important German submarine base.

There was only a short wait until the ferry put in its appearance too.

We saw these towers yesterday and I had been wondering what they were.

And so seeing as I was in the company of Master Bates, Seaman Staines and Roger the Cabin Boy aboard the Good Ship Ven .. err … Roger Raveel, I enquired of one of them what was going on.

It seems that they are the masts of more wind turbines for the offshore wind farm, whose headquarters you may remember we visited last time we were here. And the ships that are dodging in and out of the harbour are supply ships for the construction of the extension to the wind farm.

Being decanted onto the other side of the harbour, I threaded my way through the network of canals and locks that form the entrances to the various little avant-ports and found myself in the shipyard.

The shipyard was built in 1931 apparently but not much ship repairing goes on there these days. It’s pretty derelict.

The increase in size of ships and the decline of the fishing industry, as well as new high standards for pleasure boat construction, have put paid to hundreds of little yards like this.

But despite the air of dereliction, the yard wasn’t empty.

There was still this old fishing boat here, up on chocks and fenced off from the public. It’s looking very much the worse for wear these days and like the yacht from Delaware that we saw yesterday, this one won’t be going anywhere any time soon either.

As a fishing boat, you might say that it’s had its chips.

In our quest for yet another Ship of the Day today I wandered around the headland to see what I would see.

But the first thing that I saw was the barge with the piling machine scuttling off presumably for its lunch break.

Subsequent enquiries revealed that they are still working on the harbour with the intention of providing a safe haven for ships of up to 150 metres in length (which will be quite impressive from my point of view) and the work will continue for quite a while.

Not only that, according to the architect’s drawings, there seems to be the intention to put some kind of amenity building over there at the head of the old harbour entrance.

That would be a pleasant addition to the amenities offered to tourists by the town.

There was a ship sailing … "dieseling" – ed … about in the distance.

Of course I can’t be sure about it but judging by the gear that it had on board it looked as if it might be one of the supply ships for the new wind farm that they are building.

And so with the aid of the zoom telephoto lens I was able to have a good shot of it so that I could inspect it at my leisure.

But I was interrupted by a French couple who enquired about the piece of the bow of HMS Vindictive (which, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is stuck on a plinth just here, and which, because of the distraction, I forgot to photograph).

Of course it’s the kind of thing that I’ve talked about before … "at great length" – ed … so I was able to tell them everything about it. They may not be any the wiser, but they are certainly better-informed.

There was a biting wind out here and it was quite cold too, but I went down onto the beach and found a corner of the beach that was well-sheltered and in a sun-bowl.

And there I sat on the sand and ate my butties.

And read my book

And … errr … had a little relax in the sun.

And why not? It was the first time this year that I had felt really comfortable outside in the nice weather.

There is quite a bit of work going on along the beach here right now.

It seems that the sand has drifted quite considerably during the winter, probably with all of the storms that we have had (and if they had the one like we had at the beginning of January that would certainly be the case), and has buried the protective fences.

There are teams of diggers digging out the sand and passing it over to bulldozers which are spreading it out on other parts of the beach.

And judging by the amount of sand that needs shifting, they are going to be here for quite some considerable time.

A good way along the promenade in the direction of Zeebrugge is a little cafe and this was my destination today.

I’d had a really good walk so far and so I reckoned that I had earned a cup of coffee and a little relaxation. And apart from anything else, there is a gentleman’s restroom here.

So yet another sit in the sun with a coffee, the book and a little repose for half an hour while I gathered my strength for the return journey. It’s a long way back to civilisation from here.

I took a slightly different route on my way back.

After a mile or so I clambered up over the dunes behind the promenade and was rewarded by yet another candidate for “Ship of the Day”.

Never mind the smaller boat in the foreground – it’s hard to tell at this kind of distance whether the ship in the background on the horizon is a container ship or a cruise liner.

But nevertheless it is certainly an impressive sight and I’m glad that I bought the zoom telephoto lens for the new little camera.

Now this is what I had been clambering over the dunes to see.

We’ve mentioned the World War II fortifications and also the World War I ditto, but there are fortifications from an earlier date here too and the fact that they are built of brick rather than concrete will tell you that they date from before the mid-19th Century.

In fact, this is the Fort Napoleon, built by the aforementioned as part of his defences to keep out the Perfide Albion from invading the Continent.

It had also been a German command post in both World Wars so for some time it’s been on my list of places to visit

Every time that I’ve been to Oostende something has always cropped up to put a stop to any plan that I have had to come here, but not today. And so, in accordance with the usual procedure, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s closed right now to visitors.

Being obliged to scramble over fences and building roofs is not something that has caused me any great difficulty in the past, but it’s not the kind of thing that you do in Belgium. Belgian police have no sense of humour and are notoriously unpredictable in their reactions.

We have had some … errr … interesting encounters in the past, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Oostende was a German submarine base in World War I. A total of 19 were stationed here, of which 15 were lost.

I’ve never been able to find out which was the actual basin that they used, but there is a suggestion that it was apparently behind some kind of harbour gae. If so, this basin could be a very likely candidate.

I don’t think that the sunken boat over there in the corner is one of their victims however.

As an aside, it was announced over the winter that an completely intact and sealed World War I submarine, with just its bows blown off as it it had struck a mine, has been discovered just offshore.

This was also in the same basin.

And although she hasn’t sunk, she may as well because she has all the air of being a derelict.

She’s called Scorpios, having at one time been knows as Loodsboot 4 and is described as a “yacht”, although there are a couple of other “Loodsboots” with different suffixes that are described as “pilot tenders”.

Scorpios was actually built here in Oostende, in the Beliard Oostende Scheepwerk, but a long time ago. 1950 to be exact. She has a displacement of 499 tonnes and is registered in Antwerp.

As for her builders, the company was founded in Antwerp in 1877 but set up here in Oostende in 1923. The company’s main output was fishing boats.

The name of the company changed on many occasions as the smaller shipyards combined in order to remain viable, but the decline of the fishing industry saw the company finally slide into bankruptcy in 1994.

Their yard remained derelict for many years but was finally swept away in the modernisation of the port of Oostende in 2008

Heading back to the ferry I was lucky enough to be standing on top of one of the lock gates when the siren went off to tell me that the gate was about to open. I had to get a move on to avoid falling into the lock.

It’s that time of the day of course when the tide is coming in, up to the level of the water in the smaller docks and harbours and so they are opening the gates to allow traffic to proceed in and out.

And as luck would have it, right at this moment there were two fishing boats, O190 and O191, preparing to leave the harbour.

They were queued up at the inner gate (being a tidal harbour there is a double-set of lock gates here, one opening inwards and the other opening outwards).

Fishing is not something that is as common today as it was 50 years ago. In those days there would have been whole fleets of smaller coastal fishing boats in ports like Oostende but with the amount of over-fishing that took place, the fishing fleets have declined as quickly as the amount of fish that they used to catch.

Nowadays it’s mainly huge deep-sea trawlers that work on a more industrial basis out of the bigger ports.

Back on the western side of the harbour my walk along the promenade took me past yet more redevelopment.

When I first started coming to Oostende 40-odd years ago the whole sea-front area was nothing but nice belle-epoque villas from the lats 19th Century and small, cheap down-market hotels.

But today there’s almost nothing from that period remaining. It’s all been bulldozed away and replaced by modern holiday flats that cost an arm and a leg to buy or to rent. It’s just not the same as it used to be and I personally think that much of the character of the town has gone.

Nevertheless, it’s still one of the places that I enjoy the most for a little break for a couple of days and I’ll keep on coming here for as long as I can find some reasonably-priced accommodation close to the sea front.

It has some nice beaches, good walks, good, cheap rail connections to just about everywhere and not the least of the reasons being that it’s situated on one of the busiest shipping lanes in the World.

Out there on the horizon miles away but we can see quite well thanks to the telephoto lens is a ship that, i reckon, is almost certainly a container ship.

And although it’s difficult to tell at this distance, it seems to be “outbound” to the North Atlantic. That looks to me like the blunt end to the right of the photograph.

And in any case, traffic is regulated in the English Channel because of the volume of traffic, and westbound traffic is routed on the southern side. “Drive on the left”

Back at the hotel I had a little … errr … relax for half an hour or so and then later went out in search of food for tea.

The Syrian restaurant that I like and which does excellent falafelschotels was open, but so was the good Italian restaurant next door. But that was displaying a “closed on Tuesday” notice on the door so it looks like falafel tomorrow then and Italian meal tonight.

The penne al arrabiata here, zonder kaas of course, is wicked and it does have to be said that had there been a fridge in my hotel room I would have put the toilet paper in it ready for tomorrow. But I enjoyed every mouthful of it and I’ll be back here again next time I come to stay in Oostende.

On the way back to the hotel i was swept up in a party of kids streaming out of the Youth Hostel on their way to the beach for some late-evening amusement but I came back here to wash my clothes, to have a shower and take an early night. No internet up here in the rooms so instead I watched a film on the laptop.

And I made it down to the end too, for the first time in quite a while.

So now to settle down for a good night. The next night won’t be anything like as comfortable as this one. The alarm will be going off at 05:30 for a start and that’s enough to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm.

At least I can sleep on the train on Wednesday morning though.

Sunday 13th August 2017 – I’VE A FEELING …

… that tomorrow morning I’m going to be regretting today!

According to the Fitbit I’ve done … errr … 230% of my day’s activity and walked all of … errr … 17.4 kilometres.

Funnily enough, apart from the aches in the back of my legs (mainly from the cramp attack yesterday) I wasn’t any more tired than I might have been on occasions when I used to walk these kinds of distance on a regular basis.

What this actually means, I really don’t know but I’ll find out tomorrow afternoon at the hospital I suppose.

Despite the early night there was some kind of interruption in the building last night. I’m not sure what it was, but I ended up having to close the window into the communal airspace to keep the noise out.

06:20 when I awoke but badger that for a game of cowboys on a Sunday. I turned over for a short while – 08:20 was much more like it.

After breakfast I had a shower, washed my undies and prettied myself up ready for Alison. And while I was waiting for her I was accosted by some young African girl asking me if I were “Luke”. I explained that I was waiting for someone else but if she didn’t turn up and Luke didn’t turn up, we’d go off together.

She had quite a laugh at that which was good. It pays to be light-hearted, I reckon. And she was quite pretty too.

Ohhh yes – I can still chase after the women – even if I can’t remember why!

We’d arranged to meet at the viewpoint by the side of the Palais de Justice where there are some stunning views over the city.

Of course I had brought the camera with me to take some good photos but unfortunately the weather didn’t want to co-operate.

It wasn’t raining, which was quite lucky, but a horrible clammy, misty morning. and that put paid to the photography session.

We took the lift down into the Marolles and went for a prowl around the flea market. It’s been probably 15 years since I last went and there’s nothing like as much stuff – or as many customers – as there used to be.

And the prices – the days when you could find some absolute bargains seem to be long-gone. For one or two things, I had to go for a lie-down in a darkened room.

Mind you, Alison did find some marvellous coffee tables, and one of them disappeared into the back of her car. And had I had Caliburn with me, a second one would have disappeared too.

Something like a semi-globe with an olde-worlde wooden top cut in half and hinged so that you could use the inside of the globe as a storage space. How I would have loved one for my place!

We had a couple of coffees and went for a good walk around, passing once more by the viewpoint at the Palais de Justice.

By now the mist was starting to lift and the weather was looking better. To such an extent that Alison was obliged to divest herself of her jacket.

And I could take a couple of photos from up here too.

On her way home Alison dropped me off in Ixelles.

I went for a bag of chips at the fritkot and then down to the cemetery to pay my respects to Marianne.

But before I reached her plot I stumbled across this tombstone which I must never have seen before.

You need to be a French-speaker to understand why someone with a small mind like mine would find this rather amusing.

But Marianne’s grave is a little overgrown these days – it looks as if her other visitors have stopped coming. Next time that I pass by I’ll have to bring some gardening tools with me and do some tidying up.

From here, I decided to be brave and to see how far I could make it back to my hotel on foot.

And my route took me down the Avenue Buyl where they are once again modernising the tram layout at the junction with the Boulevard General Jacques.

I’ve no idea why they would be doing all of this work though – it was only a couple of years ago that they totally reorganised this junction so they can’t have worn it out already.

My walk continued down the hill and round the corner to the Abbaye de la Cambre.

regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been here a few times in the past and somewhere around I have a few photos that I’ve taken of it.

But I’ve not taken a photo of it from this angle before so I need to put this right.

There were hordes of people loitering around sunning themselves on the lawn this afternoon because by now the weather was quite nice

And this gave me an opportunity to go for a good wander around at the abbey and look for some spots that might come out really well on camera.

I hadn’t realised just how little I had actually seen of the abbey in the past.

My walk then took me along the side of the “etangs d’Ixelles” – the Ixelles lakes that were formerly park of the River Maelbeek.

This runs through the city from south-west to north-east but was filled in centuries ago. But it’s all very unstable and buildings along its course have been known to teeter and totter.

I lived in one once with Laurence and Roxanne and you could see the cracks appearing.

If you look on any good map of Brussels you can see the course of the river. There is plenty of parkland along its route and occasionally there are lakes.

in Jette, where I lived for many years, there was a huge parkland with all of the lakes that was very pleasant to walk around

In fact I often mused that 500 years ago I could have gone to see Marianne by canoe rather than by bus.

One thing that “foreigners” often say about Belgium is that the Belgians have a weird sense of humour.

My natural response is that the way things are in Belgium you need to have a weird sense of humour to live here, but when you see what the city fathers have done, you can understand why foreigners have this opinion.

It’s not every country where you would deliberately set out to build a set of ruins to liven up your city architecture.

Alison and I had noticed up by the Palais de Justice how they had set up a temporary pie hut and a pile of deckchairs for people to take the sun.

That’s clearly not an isolated incident because here at the Place Flagey we had a similar set-up. And by now we had a really good sun too.

It was turning out to be a nice day after all.

The casual strollers weren’t the only people to take advantage of the deckchairs either.

I hadn’t been there more than two minutes when an impromptu jazz band appeared and started to entertain the crowd.

They weren’t particularly up to much and the drummer was pretty dire but I’m all in favour of live music and I quite enjoyed it for what it was.

It gave me an opportunity to study the architecture too.

I used to have an apartment out on the Boulevard Reyers right next to the champignon – the mushroom-shaped tower that is the headquarters of one of the Belgian broadcasting companies.

Before they moved out there, they were based in this beautifu art-deco building in the Place Flagey. When I came to live here in 1992 the building was derelict and in a very sorry state.

It’s now been restored and they’ve done quite a good job of it. Plenty of trendy cafés on the ground floor and offices above.

Carrying on with my long walk I climbed up to the Avenue Louise – the posh bit of the city and walked all the way down the street towards the city centre.

I ended up back at the viewpoint at the Palais de Justice and by now the weather had cleared sufficiently for me to admire the voew and to try out the telephoto lens.

Of course, you don’t need me to tell you what this load of balls might be, because if anything is symbolic of the city, it has to be the Atomium.

And it does look so much better since they have cleaned it up. At one tile it was looking quite shabby.

That tower there in centre-shot is the tower of the Town Hall of the commune of Molenbeek.

But never mind that for a moment. If you look to the left of it, there on the skyline you’ll see a large block of flats.

it is in fact four large blocks of flats superimposed one in front of another and it’s in one of those where I lived for a very happy 11 years – the legendary “avenue de l’Exposition”

And now, we can’t have a good stroll around the city without bringing some controversy into it, can we?

This is the Mont de Pieté – the Roman Catholic religious charity in the rue St Ghislain that is charged with making loans to less-fortunate members of society who find themselves temporarily financially-embarrassed.

And on the wall is a plaque listing the names of the inhabitants of the local area who were victims of the Nazis in World War II.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed …it’s all very well these people who criticise the civilians of the occupied countries for what is perceived to be a lack of resolution against the invaders, but they didn’t ever run this kind of risk.

But wait a minute! What’s this?

Not 50 yards away from the plaque on the wall of the Mont de Pieté are these four plaques embedded into the pavement.

These people are also victims of the “barbarie Nazie” but their names don’t appear on the plaque of the victims who lived in the area.

And not 50 yards the other side are some more plaques set in the pavement of yet more victims, and their names don’t appear on the plaque either.

But a brief examination of the family names and of their ultimate destiny tells you all that you need to know as to why they don’t appear on the plaque.

The Catholic Church isn’t interested in anyone whose religious beliefs don’t equate to theirs and certainly isn’t interested in “sharing the suffering of the afflicted” – and that’s what I call a disgrace.

I made it back to my hotel without once stepping on public transport, and found that i’d run out of water. So that meant a trip to the supermarket in the Gare du Midi.

And later on, I went out for what was probably the worst ever vegan burger that I have ever eaten and I won’t be going there again.

But with it being a really beautiful evening by now, I went for a walk along the boulevard to watch the funfair and to try a little “cut and paste” of images taken in the dark.

This image is well-cropped from the original and the results compare favourably with what the old Nikon D5000 would have produced under similar circumstances.

All in all, I’m not too disappointed

But if you want to see what the camera can do with its video facility, here’s a little film.

Again, this is edited down quite considerably from the original (as, in fact, are all of the photos that I take) and once again, I’ve had much worse results from this with other cameras

All-in-all, I’m quite satisfied with this camera.

So that was my day out then. 2002 words, 17.4 kilometres and the exciting thing about it was that I didn’t crash out either. It clearly did me some good although I’m now walking like John Wayne after a week on his horse.

I’ll regret this tomorrow!

Friday 16th June 2017 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again.

As I might have hinted just now, this place is beginning to look as if someone has been living here for over 6 weeks and not bothered to clean it. I’ve a brush and a mop and bucket, that sort of thing, and that’s clearly inefficient, so seeing as how LeClerc had a cheap bagless vacuum cleaner on sale at just €29:00, that has now joined the assembled multitudes. And I’ll be using it tomorrow too if it all goes according to plan.

It’s Friday and Friday is of course shopping day. And it nearly wasn’t because we had one of those days where I struggled to leave the stinking pit that is my bed. David Bowie had to wake me up again, and it was something of a disorganised stagger to the bathroom.

But the mug of coffee soon brought me round and 10 minutes under a nice warm shower did the rest. I’ve shaved about a month’s growth of beard off too and now I look almost human.

I spent about 90 minutes in LeClerc this morning and actually found everything that I needed (including a vacuum cleaner). And to give you some idea of how the decadent life here in a seaside resort is transforming me into a member of the bourgeoisie, today’s shopping came to not €20:00 or €25:00 as it would in the Auvergne, but €46:71 (and that’s not including the vacuum cleaner either).

Mind you, those melons and those peaches really did look far too nice to leave on the shelves. And I’ve bought stuff to make a tofu and potato pie – to which I shall be setting my hand some time in midweek when the mushroom curry has expired.

Lunch was up on the cliffs overlooking the harbour in the sunshine, and I was there for a good couple of hours with my book. Fatigue drove me inside where, once again, I … errr … relaxed for a while.

But what have I been doing for the rest of the day?

I have in fact been making plans for a-voyaging. My next hospital appointment is sometime round about 14th August, and on the 15th I’m heading for Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. No prizes where I’m going, of course. And I’m not going on a bucket-shop airline either but on a flagship carrier – the Luftwaffe … errr … I mean Lufthansa. High time that I had a really decent and comfortable flight across the Atlantic and I’m not still fighting World War II like most Brits seem to be.

I will however see if we can make a diversion to do a bombing run over Drowning Street and Westminster.

What is sad is that there is no longer a direct flight from Brussels to Montreal (at least, ther emight be but when we started getting into the “well into four figures” prices I gave up looking). I could fly via, of all places, Nice, and I might have been tempted seeing as it was actually a cheap option, but it didn’t arrive in Nice until 22:35 and that’s precious little time to organise a hotel and the like

So tomorrow, there’s all the rest to do. Hotels, trains and buses, because I’m going to be there for 2 months. 2 months between each hospital visit and I intend to make the most of it.

Saturday 10th June 2017 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that yesterday was hot, then you should have been here today.

I slept right through to the alarm, and it was a struggle to leave my stinking pit, that’s for sure. And after breakfast, it was already so hot that I had all of the windows wide open in here. And I noticed that everyone else’s were opened too.

Fun times going down for the baguette. I met one of my neighbours coming back from town with a wheeled shopping basket thingy.
“You’re up early” I said.
“Been to the market” she replied. “Like to get it done early”.

In the newsagents “I’m not open until 09:00 tomorrow” he told me.
“That’s a shame” I replied. “I’ll be halfway to Paris by then”. Well, I won’t. Probably no more than about 4 or 5 miles or so down the line, but I won’t let a bit of poetic licence bother me.

On the way back, I noticed that the doors to the church were grand ouvert too. And just as I passed, the church organist struck up a couple of chords on the organ. It was just like something out of a Hammer Horror film – which is quite a good description from my neighbours’ point of view now that I’m living here.

It was round about here that I met my neighbour again, heading in the opposite direction. “I forgot my money” she explained. “I’ll have to go back and pay them as they all know me in town”.

Liz was next. “We’re going to Coutainville-Plage after lunch” she said. “Would you like to join us?”

So I made my butties, hit the streets, went round to the railway station to pick up my tickets for tomorrow (I’ve been caught out before by a non-working ticket machine) and went to the beach.

I found a secluded spot amongst the crowds, ate my butties in the glorious sunshine spread out on the sand on my blanket. I had a book with me too. It’s the story of the German U-boat offensive at the height of World War II – one month where the balance dramatically shifted to the Allies. It’s called Black May and, in the light of recent events, I would love to see a title more apposite than that.

Liz and Terry came along and we all relaxed in the sun watching two girls aged about 3 and 5 having loads of fun. Terry and Liz even went for a paddle.

I continued to read my book and to watch the people on the beach, including this guy struggling down to the water’s edge with what looked like a huge wing – presumably attempting to take off for the Iles de Chausey, or that’s what it looked like.

But in fact he was nothing more than one of these wind surfers, and he spent the next couple of hours, once he finally managed to launch his surf board, parading about just offshore.

We had a drink and then I came back here to finish off the rest of the pear sorbet. I have raspberry sorbet for when I come back.

Tea was out of a tin and now I’m relaxing ready for my trip tomorrow.

Leuven again. A nice change, isn’t it?

Wednesday 1st March 2017 – THE TROUBLE …

… with having had a really decent sleep during the day is that during the night it’s very difficult to drop off again. And so it was last night. Took me absolute ages.

But having said that, once I’d gone I’d gone, and until about 06:00 too. I had a quick look at the time, and turned over back sleep again until the alarm went off.

Breakfast here is at 07:30 but I still managed to haul myself out of bed early (no cacophony to accompany me, for which I am grateful) and stuck myself under the shower to liven myself up.

First down to breakfast (although I was almost immediately joined by others) and fruit salad, bread roll, orange juice and coffee. One thing about the breakfasts here, leaving aside the choice and the amounts on offer, is that everything is so fresh and tastes delicious.

And so it ought to be, given the price that one has to pay to stay in here. Of course, I’m not paying anything like the price indicated on the door, being stuck in my tiny little room in the garrett, but I’m not complaining for a moment.

What I was complaining about though was the internet. Sometime during the night it had crashed and they hadn’t been able to fix it. That left me hanging out on a limb for a while as I have so much to do here.

By 09:00 nothing had happened and so I decided to go for a walk along the promenade. It was grey and miserable, quite windy too, and there weren’t many people about.

We mentioned yesterday the story about the redevelopment of the promenade. Here, we have yet another old building from the Belle Epoch that has bitten the dust. It wasn’t as spectacular as the Villa Maritza, but there you go.

In fact by now, most of my old haunts from my spells in Oostende in the 1970s and early 80s have disappeared. All of the cheap hotels that used to be here have been swept away and replaced by blocks of holiday flats. One cheap hotel that I’d noted when I was here in 2013 had gone by the time that I came back here last November.

Not that it’s particularly relevant to this particular part of the discussion , but here’s a view of the corner of the promenade that I took this morning.

You can see another Belle Epoch villa here today, hemmed in by the more modern blocks of flats, and I wonder how long it will be before it’s gone too.

But there’s an exhibition of photos along the promenade showing us how Oostende looked 70 years ago just after the end of World War II and I noticed this photograph on display. It was taken from almost exactly the same spot as my photograph, and you can see how the corner looked back then, and compare the difference.

You might have noticed in the previous photograph the orange object on the promenade. There are actually about a dozen of them and they clearly have some kind of significance, although whatever it might be has so far escaped me completely.

It’s not exactly what I would call “artistic” but then what do I know? My idea of a sculpture is the column and statues to the right, a war memorial to the natives of the area who lost their lives at sea. It’s a shame that its site has to be cluttered up with these modern … errr … items.

I told you yesterday about the fish market here in Oostende. That’s it there, the white building with the blue wavy roof. I went for a look inside but there were only two stalls open and the choice of fish available wasn’t overwhelming. Not really worth photographing.

I reckon that the dock behind it was the old fish dock, but it’s used these days by the Police and the Customs authorities – people like that. It’s where their boats are anchored, or moored, or tied up.

When I was here in 2014 I stumbled across a ferry that I hadn’t noticed before, in all the years that I’ve been coming to the town. The deep-water port goes deep into the town and there isn’t a pedestrian way across the entrance. It’s a long walk around to the other side.

That’s the reason for the ferry, anyway.It’s only a small ferry, with room for 50 seats on board, and I took a photograph of it from the far side of the port entrance, with the town in the background. And also with the old ramps from the days when there was a ferry service across to the UK.

It’s always a bad idea for me to see a ferry, because I end up in a bad mood. In fact whenever I see a ferry it makes me cross. Especially when it’s a free ferry, and today is no exception. It always brings out the sailor in me.

Of course, that’s the reason why I was able to take a photograph from the other side of the port entrance – I’d piled on aboard the boat. As indeed you might expect.

You’ll notice by the way the booths on top of the quay to the right. It was some kind of market day going on up there.

It’s been months and months since we’ve had a real “Ship of the Day”, but you can’t go sailing across a port (even if it’s nothing like as busy as it was 50 years ago) without encountering a ship or two.

We’re in luck today, because here we have the Simon Stevin, registered in … errr … Luxembourg. Just imagine sailing this ship up the Moselle. She displaces 35,000 tonnes and was built in 2010.

She is actually a pipelaying vessel, and that will explain her presence here. With the expansion of the wind farm out on Thornton Bank, they will be needing extra cables laid to the shore.

The Simon Stevin would be the ideal vessel to be involved in a task like this.

The Simon Stevin isn’t the only big ship in the port either. We also have the Willem de Vlamingh in here too, and she’s likewise registered in Luxembourg.

She is your actual cable-layer and was built in 2011, displacing 6800 tonnes.

So here we are – some of the benefits that the wind farm has brought to the town of Oostende

As if that wasn’t enough, the harbour pilot boat was setting out of the docks and heading out to sea.

The entrance to the port is somewhat complicated and so a harbour pilot is necessary for certain boats that want to enter here. And so it looks as if there’s one of those standing offshore needing help to come in.

I couldn’t see anything hanging around outside, and nothing had come in by the time that I had left. I’ll have to go round later on this afternoon or maybe early tomorrow morning to see if anyone else has come in to join the party.

We saw in an earlier photograph – the one that I had taken of the Promenade in the 1940s – all of the fortifications that covered the shoreline of this part of the world. All of them built by the Germans in World War II

There are still plenty of them left, dotted all over the coast and we have seen plenty of them in the past. The eastern side of the entrance canal to the deepwater port is still littered with them even today and in all of the time that I’d been coming to Oostende I’d never actually been for a wander around them – until today, that it.

The port of Oostende had been a German submarine base in World War I and had been the subject of what was the precursor of the later commando raids of World War II. Not only that, the beaches here would make an ideal landing for the Allied armies coming to liberate Europe in 1944, what with the major port of Antwerp only just down the road.

Hence the German were quite nervous about the coastline around here and had used labour from the prison camps to construct these massive fortifications, as well as many others of all different types which have long-since disappeared.

What many people don’t realise though, because it was another one of these wartime secrets that wasn’t put into the Public Domain until the great release of wartime records in 1994, was that the Allies knew absolutely everything that there was to know about the Atlantic Wall, and they didn’t even need to send someone to look at it.

The company that had contracted to build it was a Belgian company, from the rue des Atrebates in Brussels. But what the Germans didn’t realise what that the company was actually owned by a Russian emigré called Leopold Trepper. And he had a part-time employment as a spy for the Soviet Union, leading a group called the Rote Kapelle or Red Orchestra

It was one of the greatest triumphs of espionage in World War II but because it was a Soviet triumph, it never received the acclaim that it deserved.

But the work was done thoroughly, and the vestiges are very difficult to remove. We’ve seen when we were in France a few years ago that one of the gun emplacements near the Atlantic Wall suffered a direct hit from a blockbuster bomb, and all that it did was to tilt the concrete.

That’s why many of these places are still here. Explosives are really the only way to remove them and it’s far too dangerous to destroy them in a congested area.

The Atlantic Wall isn’t the only set of fortifications here at Oostende. We have another exciting pile of stuff buried in the sand dunes.

Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to go over to it. It was all fenced off and I couldn’t find an obvious point of entry, and so I can’t tell you exactly what it is.

I shall have to make further inquiries.

We saw the new harbour wall when we were here in November. We walked the whole length of the other side of it in order to have a good look at what they had built, and I was tempted to go for a walk down this side of the harbour wall today, but the weather was conspiring against me.

There were some people out there trying to walk down there, but they weren’t having a great deal of success.

And you might be wandering what that bow of a ship is doing set up on a plinth out there

A closer inspection reveals that it certainly is part of the bow of a ship, and the colour gives you a clue – that it might be something to do with the Royal Navy.

It is in fact part of the bow of HMS Vindictive, a cruiser that has a very important claim to fame in the history of Oostende.

The British were concerned about the U-boats operating out of the port after its capture by the Germans during World War I, and so they launched two raids on the harbour, sinking ships in the entrance canal to the docks.

HMS Vindictive was one of those that was sunk here, in the raid on 10 May 1918, and when it was cut up for scrap, the bow section was preserved as a monument.

The English Channel is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and we have thousands of photographs going back to 1970 of ships sailing up and down here.

As ships have grown larger and larger, there are fewer and fewer of them, but the size means that you can see them easier even when they are away on the horizon, especially if you have a 305mm zoom lens.

I’ve no idea what kind of ship that this might be, but it’s certainly a big one and it seems to have an on-deck cargo. There’s plenty of accommodation on there too, so I’ve no idea what it might be. I know that there’s a car transporter that takes passengers with it and sails from Hamburg to South America, but that is probably not it.

No prizes for guessing what this ship might be. The initials of the owner – MSC- painted on the sides gives the clue away, because we have seen dozens of these in the past sailing up the St Lawrence River on the way to Quebec and Montreal.

It’s a container ship of course, and a huge one at that. And it’s empty too. And that’s a symptom of the world’s reliance on China for its manufacturing industry and that the world has nothing to send back in return.

We saw all of this with Japan in the 1970s and how it led to the collapse of manufacturing industry in the UK. Now, the rest of the world is suffering, and this is the Brave New World into which the Brexiters have plunged their country, with no colonies and noallies to back them up.

With the telephoto lens still on the camera, I could take a photograph all the way down the beach in the direction of Zeebrugge. But you can’t see much down there because of the wind whipping up the sand all the way down the beach.

We were brave, those of us out there, but at least I had done what I had intended to do, which was to have a good visit of this part of Oostende. It’s hard to think that I’ve never been out here, in all the years that I have been visiting the town.

Now I can head back to civilisation.

Parked up at a wharf near the ferry is a sailing ship, the Nele.

You might think that she is an ancient ship but she was built as recently as … errr …2005, but to a design of a traditional Oostende masted sailing ship.

It’s possible to go off for a mini-cruise on board and I did admit that I found the idea somewhat tempting. But I imagine without any doubt that I’ll be back here some time or other, and so I can make further enquiries.

I’ve not quite finished yet over here.

We’ve seen the wind farm out there on Thornton Bank. That’s about 30 kms offshore and in order to bring the power onshore they have a huge submarine cable.

Outside their offices they had a couple of metres of cable on display, and so I went over to take a photograph of it. It’s interesting because NALCOR in Labrador have laid a cable under the Strait of Belle Isle and are planning another one under the Gulf of St Lawrence to Cape Breton, so I was curious to see what a submarine cable looks like.

It will be of interest to the Brits too. Having sold their electricity-generating capacity to the French, one of these will be laid across the Channel sooner or later to run British electricity across to France in the same way that the Compagnie Lyonnais des Eaux runs British water from Kent across to Northern France through the pipeline in the Channel Tunnel in times of drought.

Back on the other side of the canal I went to the Delhaize to buy some stuff for lunch. They had grapes on offer too so that was today’s fruit issue resolved, wasn’t it? And back here, I crashed out for an hour as soon as I got in, which meant that I was rather late for my butty.

This afternoon I had a few things to do, and then went out for a walk. And here I encountered yet more of Belgium’s world-famous customer service. I went into a café for a coffee, and sat and waited for a waiter.

And waited.

Eventually, a waiter appeared, and cleared a few empty tables – and then disappeared. Eventually, he came back and I ordered a black coffee.

And waited

And waited.

Eventually I picked up my coat and left, heading for the café next door. I’d beens een by the waiter, placed my order and had it put on the table in front of me long before the other waiter in the other café had brought me the one that I had ordered.

I came back to the hotel for a warm, and then wandered off for tea. I know a nice Italian restaurant here that is cheap but good value, and they served me up a delicious penne all’arrabbiata, nice, hot and spicy.

So I’m going to try for an early night, and see how I am, and how the weather is, tomorrow. I hope that it’s a nice day and that I’m feeling up to some exciting moments.

Saturday 16th May 2015 – IN SWITZERLAND

It’s taken me long enough to find a ferry on this journey, but nevertheless here I am.

This is the ferry across the Bodensee, or Lake Constance for the English-speakers amongst you and it sails from Friedrichshafen in Germany to Romanshorn in Switzerland and I am about to make my triumphal entry therein – the first time on this journey.

The waterfront is quite modern too, and unashamedly so. and not the result of wanton vandalism on behalf of the civic authorities but wanton vandalism on behalf of RAF Bomber Command in World War II.

Not that too many people can have too many complaints about that for once (although they might protest at the lack of accuracy) because there are at least two good reasons why the town of Friedrichshafen was a legitimate military target in World War II.

And indeed not to mention World War I because the first ever bombing raid in World War I took place here just a matter of a couple of weeks after the start of the war took place here and given the primitive state of the equipment and navigation, was a stunning success that matches anything that the Dambusters could come up with in World War II.

We’ll be going for an inspection of these two legitimate targets in due course.

But it took me ages to arrive at the Bodensee as I was being continually interrupted.

This is a suspension bridge over the River Argen. according to a sign at the bridge, it was built in 1896/97 under Kaiser Wilhelm, and that shows you just what a really big man he must have been because the bridge really is quite impressive.

Today it’s flanked by a railway bridge and a modern pre-stressed concrete road bridge, but this one outshines them all.

The village of Eriskirch a little farther along the roa was full of surprises, and this is just one of them.

It’s one of our old friends a wooden covered bridge. We encounter dozens, if not hundreds of these on our journeys around North America, but Europe has its fair share to offer as we have seen in the past, and as we shall indeed see again before we are much older. I would have gone for a wander through here, but it was closed for repair.

And that’s not all. Eriskirck also came up with a Ford Cortina Mk V too, excet that this is a mainland European version called the Taunus.

This was parked in a yard with half a dozen other noteworthy cars. I gave it a good going-over and I reckon that a good weekend’s work would have this back on the road. There didn’t seem to be much wrong with it and it was solid in all the suspect places

It’s amazing the things that you encounter on your travels but seeing this flying over me as I travelled further west reminded me of what I was doing down here in the first place.

And that’s just a baby too. could you imagine something maybe five or six times as big flying over your head, because that’s what used to happen in World War I when these monsters were legendary.

Yes, well done that man. It is indeed a Zeppelin and here on the outskirts of the town of Friedrichshafen are the headquarters of the company.

On a Bank Holiday weekend it was expecting too much for me to be able to go for a trip around, much as I tried, but I had a nosey about instead.

And my hat went off to the intrepid pilots of November 1914 who flew here in rickety string and canvas biplanes who managed to fly here from France and hurl a bomb into a Zeppelin shed, even if they didn’t manage to accomplish very much

I did say that there were a couple of legitimate military targets here in Friedrichshafen. The second one was the Dornier aircraft factory here.

Dorniers were known mainly for their seaplanes and they were built and tested down on the waterfront, hence the bombing raids down there. They also made bombers, the Do-17 and Do-217 but manufacture of those was dispersed throughout Germany

The only aircraft here from before the war are those that have come from elsewhere, such as the flying boat which, if we are to believe the registration number on it, is that flown on the Amundsen expedition to the North Pole in 1925 but which I strongly suspect is a replica.

No Do-17 though – not even a replica and I found that very disappointing. I can understand there not being a real one, although if they made an effort they could certainly find some bits, but no replica is a shame.

Back on the ferry now and I forgot to take any details of the boat upon which I was sailing, which isn’t like me at all.

Anyway, it was a boat that looks very much like this one. This is sailing in the opposite direction to us and while they might not look very big, they are ten times bigger than the Hatteras Ferry boats that sail across the Hurricane belt in the Carolinas.

I’m back in Germany again and that’s the River Rhine just there.

The town in the background is called Diessenhofen, a beautiful little walled town that is first recorded in 757, although there are considerable remains from much earlier than this, even as far back as the Stone Age, and a substantial Roman hoard was discovered here.

To cross the Rhine is a substantial covered bridge, and this was part of the secret of the wealth of the town – the tolls that were generated by people wishing to cross the river.

Today though, there are no tolls, and not even a border post, despite Switzerland not being in the EU. I simply wandered across unchallenged.

But why I crossed over back there was so that I could cross back here. That’s the border and the Rhine is behind me. Theres a little finger of Switzerland that is north of the Rhine, near the village of Ramsen and this was the favourite spot for escaping prisoners of war to cross the border from Germany, where they didn’t have to contend with the Rhine.

On the German side of the border here, the guard was asleep and in the Swiss hut, the place was deserted. And the border was so unguarded (well, relatively, anyway) during the war that one escapee passed through and out the other side where he was recaptured, without even realising that he had been in Switzerland.

Ive come here to see the Rhine falls at Schaffhausen. This was somewhere else where I came on my honeymoon with Nerina and with it being mid October, the river was fairly low.

This time of year is the peak time to see the falls as the last of the snow melt roars through and it certainly was impressive from up here.

From close to, while they may not be as impressive as the Niagara Falls, they are certainly as good as anything else that Europe has to offer and it’s well worth the trip to come to see them, even if you do have to fight your way through the participants of a bus trip from the local mosque.

But be warned – it’s quite a hike back to the top again so I was glad that it was late evening when I passed by here.

I now try to find some accommodation for the night and I’m not very successful. I forgot about the Bank Holiday weekend and everywhere is either full or closed.

I do manage to find an old Renault van from the 1920s, in a very sorry state, so it isn’t all doom and gloom, despite the fast-approaching night.

In the end, I give up and head for the autoroute. There will be a rest area there and I’ll sleep in Ccaliburn tonight.

-2

Saturday 10th May 2014 – ANOTHER GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP …

… here at Blanc Mont and I woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

I wasn’t alone here either despite what it looks like in the photo. Discreetly hidden in the bushes is a French Army radio post and they were most surprised when I stumbled upon them last night when I went for a walk. I had a feeling that they wanted me to clear off but not much chance of that.

Of all of the villages around here, there’s not much to see. Not for me anyway as there is nothing much of historical importance. Well, not for me anyway as everything was obliterated during the fighting of 1914-18. You can see in the odd church some kind of vestige of original stonework, badly damaged by the shelling, but rebuilt with modern techniques and modern materials.

Still, the emphasis here in 1919 was on time, not on aesthetics, and you can’t blame them for that.

This is Navarin Farm on another high point of a Marne ridge. This is a monument raised by public subscription to remember the dead of the Battles of the Marne and is an ossuary where the bones of unknown soldiers recovered from the battlefield in modern times are laid to rest. Even 100 years on, they are still recovering soldiers from the fields.

It’s possible to go in for a visit, but not for me because, with my usual luck, it’s closed.

Outside the ossuary, the ground, in public ownership, has been left exactly as it was at the end of the war. You can see a couple of trench systems here, a concrete pillbox, and thousands of shell holes littering the site.

Just add to this a few feet of water – not hard to do as it was pouring down on an off all through the day, and you can imagine what a nightmare it must have been to have lived in these trenches for 4 years.

Suippes has not much to celebrate as it’s another largely-reconstructed town. Its claim to fame is that during World War II it suffered something of a massacre of its civilian population as you can see from this commemmorative plaque.

It’s quite easy for many people to criticise the French civilians in respect of what some see as a lack of resolution towards the German occupying forces but as I have said before, the critics have never had to run the risk of four years of bombing and four years of Gestapo activity, and never had to stare arbitrary death in the face.

Another dark claim to fame, or maybe infamy, is an event that took place here in 1915. A Division of French soldiers was ordered “over the top” to attack the enemy but having been shelled all through the night by their own artillery which had incorrectly calculated the range, the survivors were reluctant to leave their trenches once the barrage had moved on.

The French military authorities were not impressed and picked at random 25 soldiers and tried them for cowardice. All were found guilty in a summary drum-head court martial and the 4 NCOs were stood up against a wall and shot. It was the inspiration for the Kirk Douglas film Paths Of Glory.

There’s also a museum here and I had a little argument with them about their notices and descriptions – everywhere they talk about Angleterre and the Anglais. I had to remind them, most insistently, that the country is called Royaume-Uni and its inhabitants are called Britanniques.

In the driving rainstorm I paid a brief – but only a brief – visit to a French military cemetery – the Suippes Farm cemetery.

It’s interesting here to notice that many of the headstones are not crosses but a more traditional design with Arabic writing. It’s quite often forgotten that the Arabic colonies of France supplied a huge proportion of soldiers to the French Army and they died for France in the same way that the soldiers of Metropolitan France did. And as soldiers from West Africa did too.

A short drive down the road at La Cheppe, there’s the Camp d’Attila. That’s a Gaulish oppidum of, would you believe, 22 hectares surrounded by twin earthen banks and this is surprisingly complete too. It’s very impressive to go for a wander around the ramparts in the rain – I was certainly having no luck at all with the weather. There’s even a Roman road that passes right by the camp. It’s the kind of place that has everything.

So now I’m off to spend the night on the edge of Chalons. I don’t care what they call it today, or what they will call it in the future. To me, it always has been and always will be Chalons-sur-Marne.

-2

Friday 9th May 2014 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about the sleep issues last night – but not by very much. Although it did take a while to get off to sleep, once I did finally drop off I remember nothing whatsoever until about 07:15 when I woke upto find my little spec here as deserted as the Mary Celeste.

Mind you, it’s not quite true that I remember nothing. In fact I was being interviewed by the local tax inspector who professed total astonishment that my outgoings were exactly the same as my incomings, before any allowance for food and other such personal expenses. I had to explain that some of the outgoings were notional outgoings, that quite often I was fed at work, and that I really was living on the breadline, giving them a tour of my apartment in Jette and showing them the repairs.

So on with the motley today and this is where I start work.

The road between the Belgian border here near Rocroi and Nevers in the Bourgogne is one of the best in the world. It has everything, except the St Lawrence of course, but it also has loads of history and we pass through one of the most devastating battlefields of the war. Not the Somme, or Ieper, or Verdun, but the Marne where the French held off the Germans for four years.

It also has abandoned motorways.

Well, not really abandoned, but in the late 1990s the French built this superb 10-km stretch of motorway to bypass Rocroi and brought it all the way to the Belgian border, and here it sits because the Belgians won’t extend it.

It really is the Road to Nowhere.

The town of Rocroi is interesting, though.

This part of France has always been the cockpit of Europe with invading armies from everywhere crossing back and forth. Many of the nobles fortified their houses and the local churches and even a few hills, and so the King of France ordered a fortified city to be built here.

It’s a typical star-shaped fortress and contrary to what people might think, it’s not a Vauban fortress because it was built in the mid 16th Century, over 100 years before he was born. Nevertheless, he did come here and make a few improvements to the original design.

The fortifications are still almost complete today, and that’s quite astonishing. Some has fallen down and a couple of modern gateways have been pierced through, but nothing, apart from the original narrow gates, seems to have been demolished.

About 10 kms outside the town, the main road passes over a culvert that I have always been convinced was a former railway line.

One of the tasks of today was to track it down and sure enough, here it is. A local yokel (who was not a very vocal local yokel unfortunately) told me that it ran to Rimogne where there were important slate quarries. He remembers it as a boy but it’s been closed for years now.

Winding my way through the Ardennes I come to the town of Rethel.

This is a beautiful little town on the banks of the Aisne with plenty of history. And you might think that the history is reflected in the old buildings here. But in many cases you might be wrong because much of the town and some of the “historic” buildings date from no earlier than 1920, and some from 1945.

The town hall here for example, is from the early 1930s

In 1914 at the start of World War I the town was burnt down (it’s not just in Canada that this happens) and the invading German soldiers did the rest. Rethel was one of the major German garrison towns behind the front line of the Marne battlefields.

In 1940 the town was smashed by General Guderian’s Panzers who passed this way on their race to the coast and then to the Swiss frontier.

The high Champagne plateau is famous for its sugar beet and its wind turbines. There are dozens of each all over the place, and here is one of the bigger sugar beet plants. It’s owned by CADSAR EUROLUZ, whoever they might be, and you can see some wind turbines in the background.

It makes quite an impressive photograph, which is no surprise, as it’s an impressive building in quite an impressive setting.

You’ll all know of this roundabout because I’ve talked about this quite often. It’s on what is the highest point of the plateau and 6 roads come into it. It’s here that we turn south, direction Chalons.

What is remarkable about it is that it is here that the air changes. Standing up on the top here you can feel the difference in the air – to the north and west it’s all claggy and oppressive but to the south it’s a lost fresher and a lot more inspiring in the same way that the air in North America is. It’s something that I can’t explain.

Final stop is one of the biggest German war cemeteries in Northern France. Over 12,000 soldiers, and more arrive each year as they are exhumed from farmland, are in here, four to a grave. There are quite a few Jewish graves and also quite a few soldiers with Polish names because, don’t forget, Poland didn’t exist at this period and was partitioned between German, Austria and Russia

There are probably a few French names in here too because Alsace-Lorraine was part of Germany at this time and soldiers from there were conscripted into the German army.

So tonight I’m at the American war memorial at Blanc Mont. This is one of the highest points on the Marne front line and was heavily fortified by the Germans. There are still the remains of trenches here. The hill was stormed by the Americans under Pershing at the beginning of October 1918 and the Germans pushed back.

And as you might expect, the monument is closed for repair so it can’t be visited. No surprise there, is there?

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EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: world war 2

Friday 2nd April 2021 – IT’S BANK HOLIDAY …

Thursday 4th June 2020 – THAT WAS PROBABLY …

Sunday 3rd February 2019 – WHAT A GORGEOUS …

Monday 14th January 2019 – NEW KITS ON THE BLOCK

Tuesday 18th September 2018 – AND SO I WENT …

Saturday 7th July 2018 – ONE OF THESE DAYS …

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 – WHERE’S THAT CONFOUNDED BRIDGE?

Monday 16th April 2018 – I’M PAYING …

Sunday 13th August 2017 – I’VE A FEELING …

Friday 16th June 2017 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

Saturday 10th June 2017 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

Wednesday 1st March 2017 – THE TROUBLE …

Saturday 16th May 2015 – IN SWITZERLAND

Saturday 10th May 2014 – ANOTHER GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP …

Friday 9th May 2014 – I WAS RIGHT …

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