The Pilgrims' Progress

At last we got our motorhome, (only 3 weeks late) from Marquis in Preston. I think the main reason that they finally gave it to us was that they couldn't think of another reasonable excuse for hanging on to it.
After the so called training/handover they actually asked Iris whether they could take some photos of us with the vehicle posing as the happy, satisfied customers which they would then post on their website as an endorsement of their incompetence. Iris declined their kind offer, although I would have accepted provided I could have written the script.

After a day stocking all the paraphernalia into the van, (and believe me it took a full day), we finally set off on Sunday morning and drove to Canterbury, (in Kent, not the South Island for those of you who are geographically challenged) and spent a pleasant evening wandering around the ancient city (which is only the size of a village really).

The town is still a place of pilgrimage and has been for about 1500 years now. It was interesting to see people of different ethnicities and faiths looking around the cathedral, including some muslims.

One nice touch, as we took a picture of this leaning building was getting "photo bombed" by a couple of young Aussies. Unfortunately for them they were a touch slow and failed to beat the shutter but it gave us a good laugh. (You can just catch a glimpse of one of the Aussies in the bottom left).

One of the least likeable things about the town is the mixture of medieval and modern. One of my pet hates is the incompetence of Town Planners, if that's what they are still called, although it's probably something like an "Urban Efficiency and Coordination Manager" these days. They don't seem to be able to prevent, or even encourage some kind of visually and emotionally satisfying mix in a town, street or city, although there are some exceptions (such as in the Lake District where all new buildings in certain areas must be built in traditional Lakeland stone).

This monstrosity above, was immediately next to the remains of a 15th century church!

We also walked round to the cathedral which was closed to visitors except for the singing, dancing, religious types attending Evensong, but we managed some pictures of the outside and environs.

One super low point was finding statues of Liz the Fascist and her barmy husband Phil the Greek next to the main entrance door, sculpted in finest marble.

They have both been in the news a lot lately because of the Nazi salute beloved of the royals and also Philip's inane mutterings that have included:

a) Telling a photographer to get a f*#@ing move on.
b) Stating that if reincarnation is possible that he would like to come back as a virus that would only affect poor people and rid the world of them!
c) Asking a group of working women who they were spongeing off!!!

All this from the head of the biggest spongers in the universe.

The next morning we had breakfast in Canterbury which revealed that Italian cafes, (one of which was on the main street), do not do a passable imitation of either an English breakfast or scrambled eggs on toast and then we set off for the Dover-Dunkirk ferry and hit the continent.

The first leg of our continental journey will be to retrace the steps of Iris' Uncle Billy who strode through Flanders as a liberator in late 1944. One feature of the allied liberation, or so he told us, was to loot the Phillips factory in Eindhoven where he supervised the removal of as many house radios that the Liverpool battalion of the 51st Highland division could carry, (for later sale on the black market). However, Uncle Billy was always the champion of the underdog and he gave his share away to an American deserter whose need was greater than theirs. How did we win the war?

Along the way we called in at Ypres and unfortunately missed the last post at the Menin Gate but on the following morning, drove past some of the cemeteries and memorials that dot the district. There are many different memorials, some big, some small, but we called at the Tynecot Memorial as it is a Commonwealth site and included the New Zealand memorial to the dead of Passendale, (the local village is spelled this way, although it gets translated as Passiondale or Paschaendale). Finding the site was not as easy as it should have been as the Satnav was playing up and taking us down roads fit more for a horse and buggy but eventually we got there by following the road signs saying "Tynecot Memorial" instead.

The site is hidden from the road and the car park, and then it just hits you when you come round the corner at the rear of the memorial wall. There are 12,000 graves here, all from the third battle of Ypres (Passendale) and the sight and the scale of the memorial and cemetery is like being hit between the eyes, kicked in the guts and kneed in the balls all at the same time.

Even though this one cemetery represents a small fraction of the 1.7 million dead the scale is just breathtaking, head shaking and hard to take in. We'll never forget it.

The graves were scrupulously maintained with the grass like putting greens and lots of flowers growing around them but ironically, the only poppies were man made. Some of the graves (those with known inhabitants) had been personalised to a degree by their families with short messages of affection, but most were not.

 

 

Just behind these graves is one of the German blockhouses that was captured.

There was one section with a New Zealand memorial to the missing (with no known graves) plus many individual headstones with the silver fern, some known, some not. In the very central area a large cross stands over the remnants of a German blockhouse that was finally captured by the Aussies in 1917.

 

The remains of the main blockhouse can be glimpsed through the smallsquare in the centre of the plinth. The plinth is built over the rest of the blockhouse.

 

 

 

The New Zealand Memorial to those missing without trace somewhere near Passendale.
 

In the entire cemetery there are 2 graves, each containing the remains of 2 Germans, only one of whom was named, the other 3 being "unbekannt". There was a not so subtle distinction on these headstones, as they were not "Known unto God", as all the allied unknown soldiers have on their headstones, God obviously wouldn't be interested in Huns.

The German headstones were also a lot cruder and in coarser stone.

 

2 unknown German warriors!

 

 

One nice touch on this grave was a small cross with poppies left behind with the word "Aroha" upon it - known unto god but adopted and loved by someone from home.

 

 

And finally, for our Canadian family, someone a long way from home.