Thursday 14th May 2009

Today we leave the Isle of Wight and head to London again to stay overnight prior to our trip to Lille in Belgium for our 3 day tour of the Battlefields of the Western Front.
We have our usual breakfast, and Avril says she will book us a taxi for 11.00am as our train isn’t until 1.30pm from Southampton to London. We have packed up the bags again, and decide to walk up to Carisbrooke Castle after breakfast to fill in time, and have a look at the castle which is less than 15 minutes walk away.
The walk up to the castle is quite strenuous, but it only takes around 15 mins. And when we get there, find that it isn’t open until 10.00am – so we decide to walk around the outside and have a good look at it.
The walk is quite easy, the castle used to have a moat, and there is still quite a deep ditch all the way around, we meet a number of people walking there dogs in the area as it is lovely and wild for dogs, and there are mole holes for them to explore.
It only takes us 20 minutes to walk around so we have to wait until the gates open – in the meantime a few more people gather waiting to go in.
At 10.00am they let us in and we pay our money, and buy a guide book which has lots of nice illustrations, and then begin to explore the castle – we only have 40 minutes as we need to get back to the Lodge in time for the taxi.
We watch a video presentation on the history of the castle which puts it into perspective, and then have a look at the lovely little chapel, and then the donkeys that live there. The donkeys were used to haul water up, and walked in a wheel contraption – rather like a mouse wheel, and this wound the rope around a spindle and raised the bucket of water. The donkeys don’t have to work hard because they don’t actually haul up water any more – just an empty bucket.
After that it was time for us to return and catch our taxi into Cowes to catch the Red Funnel Red Jet back to Southampton – we picked up some sandwiches for lunch on the train, as the train food is dreadful, and sat back to enjoy the crossing.
Would you believe, as we arrived in Southampton we saw the Queen Mary 2 again – she had arrived that morning from an Atlantic crossing from New York – it was such a coincidence, and we took photos of course.
Off the ferry and on to the free shuttle bus from the ferry to the railway. We got there around 12.20pm, and we saw there was a train due to leave for London at 12.30 so I asked if we could catch that one with our tickets – we could so we raced over to platform 1 and managed to catch the train just before it left.
This meant we would be in London (Waterloo) an hour earlier, which turned out to be a good thing as we had to tackle the underground with our 2 suitcases and other bags which was quite difficult – especially having to change trains on the underground and there being no lifts – fortunately some very kind men assisted Deb with her case up and down the various stairs, and I managed to negotiate mine up and down on my own. We had to get from Waterloo to St Pancras – right across the city.
When we got to St Pancras – we went to the Eurostar terminal, and had a rest and cup of coffee – then Deb went and changed some Pounds for Euros for Belgium and France, and checked out exactly what we had to do in the morning.
Next we got ourselves a trolley, loaded on our suitcases, and then wheeled it all up the street to the Youth Hostel – we had a room on the 6th floor – and no disabled facilities, bunk beds and a communal bathroom – but we just accepted it – Deb needed to have a rest by this time, so she climbed up to the top bunk and I did some laundry, and repacked all the bags again – I managed to get everything we needed in France into one case, all the souveniers and presents in another case, and all the rest of the clothes into the new bigger bag we had purchased previously. We didn’t need the two smaller bags so folded them up and put them into a case.
Then we went out to have dinner – we also needed to find a place that sold alarm clocks as the one I had with us didn’t make a very loud noise, and as I have gone deaf in one ear with the punctured eardrum, we needed something that made a lot of noise to wake us up for our early start.
We decided to go back to St Pancras station as there are many shops there and we thought should be able to find something there – we ended up buying 2 clocks – one from a gift store – I didn’t think it would be loud enough but Deb reckoned she would hear it. Anyway we found a better clock at Boots Pharmacy store – and bought that as well – 3 clocks should do the trick we thought.
Then we headed off to have Pizza for dinner at a place called Pizza Express – we had a really great meal, and then returned to the YHA for the night around 9.00pm – we had our showers as I thought we had to be up at 4.45am in order to be at the station by 5.30am for the check-in – 30 minutes before the train leaves.
After that it was read our books and try to sleep – I had a dreadful night, only about 3-4 hours sleep, but I did hear the alarm at 4.45am and we dived out of bed, dressed and headed off with our huge trolley load of baggage.

Friday 15th May 2009
En route to Lille and Day 1 of Battlefields Tour.
When we got to the station we had to go through security !!! then customs before we could go to the waiting area before being called to the platform where the train goes from.
I saw that there was a train to Brussels at 5.57am and waited for the 5.57am train to Brussels to be called, when we went to go up to the platform, the ticket inspector told us that our train wasn’t until 6.59am – I had mis-read the time on the ticket – it was very poorly printed I might add – and we were an hour ahead of time for our train – so we had an hour to fill in – so we had our breakfast provided by the YHA in a bag, and a cup of tea and sat and waited for our train to be called. Did I feel stupid !!
When we did get to board the train our coach was miles down the platform so it was quite a hike – thank goodness all the luggage was on a trolley – any way we eventually found it – coach 14, threw the cases on board into the luggage area, then went down to find our seats – we had a seat on either side of a table and hoped that we wouldn’t be sharing with anyone else – which turned out to be the case – then the train left immediately on time. Smoothly pulled out and off we went, there was a stop just before we left England to pick up more passengers, then it was off through the Chunnel and over to France – we were due to arrive in Lille at 9.25am. At around 8.15 I decided to turn on the computer and load up the photos from yesterday – I had no sooner got it set up when there was an announcement that we would be pulling into Lille in 5 minutes – there had been no announcement that there was a change in time between England and France – so there was a mad panic as I packed up the computer and we hastily got organised to get off the train with all our luggage again.
We achieved this – and found a trolley for the luggage, and then had to work out where meeting point K was, which was where Rod was going to pick us up for our tour.
We eventually found the meeting point, and Rod – and then we were loaded into his Mercedes 7 seater, and off we went.
We toured an awful lot of the battlefields – and before long I was pretty confused – we managed to take quite a few photos during the course of it all. Rod is very knowledgeable, and told us a lot about the various battles, etc.
We stopped at a lovely restaurant for a 3 course meal for lunch – which was delicious – then off again for more cemetries and memorials to visit – it started to rain during the afternoon – but Rod had 2 big umbrellas – so it wasn’t too bad.
We finally stopped for the day at our hotel – Hotel Ariane in Ieper Belgium – we have very nice accomodation, and went out to the Menin Gate this evening for the evening Last Post service then had dinner with Rod and collapsed for the night.

Today we went to the following places
Day 1:

After picking us up in Lille we traveled to the wonderful Medieval town of Ypres where we will see as much of the Australian battlefield as possible, including Messines Church and Craters, Plugstreet and the Christmas truce site, Hill 60, Polygon Wood, Passchendaele, Tyne Cot and Langemark and in the evening we will dine prior to attending the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate. Overnight at Ariane Hotel, Ypres.

Day 2:
After breakfast we travel to the Somme, visiting on route the Fromelles Battlegrounds, the Australian Memorial to the Missing and the Diggers Memorial. Then we head off to Bullecourt, First Battle of Bullecourt In March 1917, after the battles of the Somme and Verdun in order to shorten their front and make their positions easier to defend. the German army withdrew to the Hindenburg Line. This move was rapidly followed up by the British and empire forces, and they launched an offensive around Arras in early April 1917.

Day 3:
This morning you retrace the footsteps of 1st, 2nd and 4th Aus Division who, in 45 days, launched 19 attacks and lost 23,000 men in an area of about 2 square miles. You also visit Albert, Pozieres village and 'the Windmill', Mouquet (Mucky) farm, Fricourt German cemetery and the Thiepval memorial. Villers Bretonneux and Le Hamel, where the AIF stopped the German advance of 1918, and retook Villers Bretonneux at Mid Night 24th April. The next day was the 3rd ANZAC day. You will see the school and Museum, Adelaide Cemetery, Australian National Memorial, Australian Corps Memorial Park and Le Hamel. You also walk the battlefields where, after Monash`s detailed tactic's resulted in all objectives being taken in 93 minutes. Then we will drop you off at Amiens TGV at 1815hrs to catch your train to Paris .

This will be the last chance to update the blog so we will catch up with you all when we get back to Sydney.