August 9, Thursday - The Dover hostel offers a breakfast with the price of the room, so we started the day with quite a nice selection of food. Before we set off, Rowan had a look at my bicycle and fixed up my gearing for me. I had been having trouble, and there were definitely some problems with it. But it has been fine since. Rowan is riding a fixed gear, so he doesn't have gearing problems. :)

Then we loaded up our gear, and headed for the dock. The dock in Dover is not hard to find ... just follow all the traffic!

We had no problem booking passage, and the cost for the two of us, plus our bicycles, came to a total of £30 - not bad at all! We had to wait till noon to get on the ferry, and the process was different from the last time I crossed at Dover in 2003. It seemed a bit more complicated, and a little less bicycle-friendly, but nevertheless, it is less hassle than a train.

We sat in the dining area at the front of the ferry for the duration of the trip across to Dunkerque. At first, the water was calm, but as we reached about the halfway point, there were waves and we guessed that the wind had kicked up. As a matter of fact, it had, and I don't think it stopped blowing for the rest of the trip. I was once told that France is not windy ... but this trip proved that completely wrong.

When we landed in Dunkerque, it was cool, drizzly, and of course, windy. We made our way out of the dock area (a fairly long distance) and proceeded down a highway aiming for Grande Synthe, a suburb of Dunkerque, to try to find the Decathlon store. About 12 kms along, Rowan flatted. What an introduction to France! But fortunately, it got better.

Somehow we found both Grande Synthe and the Decathlon store ... quite by accident, really. We just kept riding, and all of a sudden ... there it was. It is quite the store! Heaps of sporting goods stuff, and very good prices. It was tempting to spend a long time there browsing, but time was getting on.

We bought a tent, the T3 Ultralight Pro -- "Excellente pour 3 personnes. Royale pour 2!" -- and dubbed it "Buckingham Palace" because it is a rather squat grey structure. It is grey with orange trim and bright orange pegs, and for some reason, when we are inside it, everything takes on a rosy-color ... sort of mulberry. It weighs in at 3 kg -- not too heavy. Rowan and I also both bought some clothing and a few other things ... the start of a bit of a buying spree at Decathlon stores.

Then we set off to find a grocery store, toilet, and a place to sleep. And we found each ... in that order ... but not without incident. On the way to find a place to sleep, I wasn't paying attention to what was happening on the road. I was looking at the buildings and everything else around me. Rowan stopped for a red light ... and I didn't ... at least not initially. I plowed right into the back of his pannier and went over. Like I said, what an introduction to France! Fortunately, when you crash with panniers on your bicycle, they take the brunt of the fall. I had a sore hip and hand for a couple days, but that was it. Thank goodness, I didn't re-injure my shoulder!

We looked at several potential places to sleep, but none really appealed to us. Finally, the place we found to sleep was in a field next a dirt bike track. No one was around, and it looked as though the track had not been used in ages. So, without much difficulty, we set up our brand new tent.

August 10, Friday - Just as we were getting up in the morning, we heard a noise in the dirt bike track next to us. What do you know ... despite the fact that the track did not look as though it had been used in ages ... it was being used now! A whole collection of children, along with a few adults, were riding around the track!! Isn't that just the way it goes.

We packed up, with an audience, and set off down the road to Ieper (Ypres).

The route was relatively flat, which was good, but fairly windy. At first the road was busy because we were on a canal road and an "N" road, but then we turned onto a "D" road, and the traffic died down. Not too much further down the road, we rode into Belgium.

We stopped in a little town, called Poperinge, to take a photo of a dome of bicycles ... and discovered that we were on the Tour de France route. In fact, we were following the precise route for the first third of the second stage! I didn't watch it this year, so I had no idea it even went into Belgium. We noticed TDF signs, and bicycle displays, all over the place for the next little while.

Later we came to a roundabout with a large artichoke sculpture in the middle of it, which Rowan photographed. He enjoys photographing sculptures and things like that, and Belgium seems to enjoy putting creative and different things in the middle of their roundabouts.

And later we arrived in Ieper ... a very intriguing, yet a bit deceptive little town. Ieper was almost completely destroyed in the First World War, but the townspeople decided to rebuild it the way it was before. Most of the buildings in Ieper are relatively new ... but everything looks very old.

We made our way through the town, over lots of cobblestone, to the Hanging Tap (I said the Belgians put interesting things in their roundabouts!), and then to the campground. We set up and got settled, and while we were doing so, we chatted with an Australian couple who had "retired" at a fairly early age, and were travelling the world, working at odd jobs here and there to support themselves. It was nice to know that it can be done!

Then we went to the Menin Gate for Last Post. "Every evening (at 8 pm) since 1928, the Last Post has been sounded under the imposing memorial arches of the Menin Gate. The Last Post is the traditional salute to the fallen and is played in honour of the memory of the soldiers of the then British Empire, who fought and died in the 'Immortal Ypres Salient' between 1914 and 1918." http://www.ieper.be/ieper_en.aspx?SGREF=10587

People from all over the world visit Ieper, and gather for this ceremony. It is done a little differently each night depending on who is there. A person or organization can contact the Last Post Association and ask to take part in the ceremony to honor someone who died in the First World War. You can read more about the ceremony here: http://www.lastpost.be/mainpage.htm
I will say this ... it is quite moving.

After the ceremony, Rowan and I wandered around the Menin Gate reading the lists of names of fallen soldiers. The soldiers who have their names engraved on the Menin Gate, are just those who were missing in action ... whose bodies they could not find. The soldiers were from all over the British Empire, including Australia and Canada. There are over 50,000 names.

August 11, Saturday - We slowly got ourselves together in the morning and then headed into town to see more of the town, and to take in the In Flanders Fields Museum, located in the rebuilt Cloth Hall (the building that looks like a cathedral). We wandered around looking at various things, stopped for an ice cream at a corner shop, and window-shopped at one of the bicycle shops.

The bicycle shops we came across both in Belgium, and the area of France near there, contained a few road and mountain bicycles, but mostly step-through bicycles. I glanced at the weight listed on the tag of a couple different step-through bicycles, and they were all somewhere around 17 kg. These are not light bicycles! However, they come complete with lights, a rear rack, and a basket. They are very much utility bicycles. And everyone cycles! Right from children to the elderly, everyone was on a bicycle. Some had new step-through bicycles, and some had quite obviously old step-through bicycles. It was nice to see so many people on bicycles.

The museum was very gripping. It is well done, and designed to take visitors to the First World War with sights, sounds, and smells. It doesn't pull punches. I had learned about the First World War in school, of course, and we recited the "In Flanders Fields" poem by John McCrae every November 11th during the Remembrance Day ceremony, but it really didn't mean anything to me until this visit to Flanders Fields and area. In fact, somehow I had forgotten, or entirely missed the fact, that the poem "In Flanders Fields" was written by a Canadian!

These are a couple sites about John McCrae and his poem. http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/inflanders.htm
http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=history/firstwar/mccrae

I had no idea of the quantity of men who fought, and only a limited idea of the conditions. At the Menin Gate the night before, the fact that over 50,000 soldiers were "Missing in Action" had puzzled me, but the story that unfolded in the museum explained why so many were missing, and told of the horrific situations during the early part of the war. Remembrance Day will take on new meaning for me.

As we were leaving the museum, we looked over a selection of maps and picked one. Belgium, and particularly the area around Flanders Fields, has created maps for walking, cycling, and driving which take visitors around to see the gravesites and memorials for the fallen soldiers. For each of these routes they produced full maps - a set for walking, a set for cycling, and a set for driving. We chose the Vredes Fietsroute.

After the museum, we did our shopping, then tried to contact Claire in Paris with no luck. The public phone system in Belgium is confusing to say the least. First they speak to you in any language but one you understand (I would have taken French or English!), and even when they do finally speak in one you understand, the connection is so blurry you can't understand what they are saying anyway. Then they take all the money from your phone card to pay for your struggles to understand what is being said to you, so you can't complete the call once you do think you understand the instructions. Understand? :) We gave up.

And at 8 pm we went to the Last Post again. It was different from the night before - different people and groups remembering different families and troops. But it was also different, more meaningful, because of what I had seen during the day at the museum.

August 12, Sunday - Today we woke to church bells ringing and ringing and ringing. We had breakfast, and then we rode the Vredes Fietsroute, a 45 km cycling route (which became 56.5 kms for us for some reason) through the World War I battlefield.

We stopped at many memorials and cemeteries for the soldiers of WWI from Australia, Canada, and many other places. One was even a German cemetery. It was very interesting to walk around the cemeteries and around some of the other significant battlefield areas and to imagine it all without trees and devoid of everything but mud.

Along the way we met one of the "curators" of the memorials and the signs marking the route, and his wife. They were also cycling the route and checking up on things. They, and a few others, volunteer to do this every so often to ensure that everything remains in good condition. We had a very nice chat with them, especially once we let them know that I was Canadian and Rowan was Australian. And I have to say that the route was extremely well-marked and easy to follow. Whoever set up these routes has done a very good job.

We also found another smaller museum in a town with a large church. Tunnels had been dug out underneath the church and were used for headquarters, first aid, rest areas, and so on. They had a model of the bombed church and tunnels that was quite interesting, as well as pictures with the story of how the war affected that town.

I was also interested to notice the walking club(s) out for some fairly long walks in the area. It almost looked like they were holding a Randonneuring style event, but on foot. They had "controls" set up periodically along the way which provided the walkers with food, etc. but seemed to have time limits as well.

When we returned to Ieper, we discovered something else I found particularly interesting. If you have gone to the Ieper site I mentioned above, you might have discovered it as well. Ieper celebrates the cat! The traditions behind those celebrations were rather horrible (for cats), but starting in the early 1900s the tradition has been much more favorable including a cat parade, Cat Queen, and "Cuddly Kittens" (Snoezepoezen). If you look closely at the memorial in the picture, you will notice two cats.