Our last full day on the Continent!
Am awake at 5 with the noisy Norma next door (see yesterday's video evidence) but get back off again, thankfully. We had been talking about how much we have enjoyed the two phases of this break - the touring/hotels bit and the camping/biking sections, and how quickly we have switched from one to the other.
It is noticeably cooler in the car park before breakfast with some cloud, although warm when the clouds part. The thicker cloud seems to be to the north though. My right hamstring is still tight, as it has been since Italy, so I keep trying to stretch it out - nothing too serious but it did cramp up on our last night camping which proved tricky as I had to bend my leg in order to get out of the sleeping bag. I also manage to post to my normal blog using Blogsy which I had downloaded for the iPad. This was my 2000th post since I first blogged in May 2005.
Our first stop on the road is Laon as I had seen the Cathedral on the hill as we had driven up and down the autoroute previously. Laon itself looks like an ideal set for a Three Musketeers film.
The Cathedral of Notre-Dame is glorious in the scale and yet lightness of the interior. Like Reims this is another early Gothic rebuild (second half of the 12th century through to the early 13th) and so there is a lot of height in the pillars and galleries.
The exterior is also typical of this style with a complex west end and, famously at Laon, a huge number of towers. Five of the original seven survive.
The slightly sinister looking creatures with horns that are visible near the tops of the towers are actually bulls, marking the work done by bulls pulling the stones all the way up the hill to where the Cathedral was to be built.
But it is the interior which I found most stunning. The vaulting in the ceilings is quite an interesting piece of design as the clerestory windows up at the highest level have alternating styles of vaulting so as to maximise the openness to the light.
We sit outside to ponder the magnificence and find a cafe opposite. We then walk around the Cathedral and can look back east across the plain with the autoroute obscured slightly by the line of trees. The lady in the hat sitting on the bench to the right of the photo then started singing and walking towards us, so we continued around the Cathedral and back to the car.
Further north on the autoroute and we stopped for lunch at the jam packed services near Urvillers, before we strike out west along the E44 making towards Thiepval. We followed the sat nav but stopped when we found a roadside cemetery called Peake Wood. I found the neatly arranged rows of graves tremendously moving.
It is a still and calm spot, but sad nonetheless. We pass what we think is a German cemetery, but it feels more hidden behind hedges from the road. Our next stop was the majestic monument to the missing at Thiepval.
The sheer scale of the names of the missing from the conflict around the Somme is mind boggling and awful in equal measure. Name after name, in column after column on panel after panel around the bases of the sixteen pillars.
Occasionally a name will have been removed when remains are formally identified, and out at the back of the memorial are yet more burials. None of the photos quite capture the appalling desolation and yet dignity of this place.
We then set off up the lanes towards the village of La Boiselle in search of the Lochnagar Crater. We park on the side of the track and cross over to the crater. Nature has gone some way to recaliming the crater itself, with grasses and plants growing on the slopes, and the decking around the top allows a visitor to walk all the way around without risk of slipping or damaging the wild flowers. This marks more or less the front line of the German trenches on the day the Battle of the Somme began, and the enormous explosion blew soil (and presumably Germans) some 4000 feet into the air.
All this land around is now gently rolling farmland, not dissimilar to the parts of Wiltshire on the edges of Salibury Plain that we know so well.
I programme the sat nav for the hotel and we set off. The numbers at the top of the iPhone screen when the tomtom app is running show you how far you are from your destination, but with 2.5 kms to go to we are pretty certain we have gone wrong. We cross a single track bridge over a canal, and we are then most definitely on farm tracks with crops growing up on either side. I must have made a typo when I programmed the Ibis in Douai into the phone as the only info the email confirmation gave me was latitude and longitude. Transposing two digits, for example, might explain why, when I carefully retype the co-ordinates in, the phone now says there are 60kms to go.
Arriving in Douai itself is also tricky. There are major roadworks in town and the obvious main drag into the centre is closed. The satnav calculates an alternative route but this too leads to a narrow bridge over a canal and suggests driving up a road which is clearly one way the other way. I don't have time for a photo, but this is the nearest I can get on Google Street View. We turn around (tricky on narrow roads with a Landy) and head back for the Centre-Ville until we find the Ibis tucked away slightly, but very pleasant and friendly. They even allow us to leave the bikes in their Conference Room.
Douai seems clean and friendly, but a lot of places seem closed which is strange for a saturday evening. The Receptionist at the Hotel suggests two possible restaurants. The Creperie (where we might get good Breton Cidre) is some walk across town, so instead we aim for the one across the square, stopping by the local bar as we await opening time.
La maison de Leopold is extremely pleasant. E orders Carbonara (which was so tricky to find in Italy) and it comes with an egg yoke in half a shell on top.
I have a very decent steak followed by creme brulee and a coffee. We stroll back and see that the rear tyres of the Landy are caked in mud from our having to do a three point turn on the farm tracks, so we have a little memorial of our own and some Somme mud to take home.
Our last full day on the road and we love the Landy to bits. I apologise to her for considering whether to purchase a VW campervan. Pamela, I am sorry for even thinking such unfaithful thoughts. You have been awesome.
We eagerly download the newly released trailer for Skyfall, the next Bond movie, and then watch the second episode of season 2 of Extras. E really enjoys them - is he having a laugh?
Miles today - 183.
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