Hello everyone it’s a cool, but fine, morning here. Looking forward to getting on the road, no rain forecast!

I forgot to mention that on this trip we have passed over another superb French bridge, Le Pont de Normandie. It’s a little tricky to get a descent photo, especially when there is rain brewing, as you can see!

So maybe this is better and no I didn’t take it!>

As is customary, I must say a few Thank You’s.

Firstly to Mrs Dookes, for yet again giving her impossible husband space to chase his dreams, merci mon amour, je t’aime! To Vifferman for his company, humour and respect for both my quest and the places and things we have seen, not to mention friendship for over fifty years, thanks mate! To my beloved Harley, for another great time and of course everyone who has been riding with us via this blog, thanks for your support and comments, it means a lot.

Next up, Harley and I will be off on another solo trip in June, it’ll be cool if you can ride along with us.

Well the nights busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere….

Dookes

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Hi all!

We are currently parked up I Falaise, in the middle of Normandy. I’m sure that it’s a nice town, but at the moment we are sitting out the Mother of all thunderstorms!

It started about ten minutes down the road and boy, did it fall out of the sky, road was flooded almost instantly!

So, as we rolled into town and saw a McDo’s we dived for shelter and a hot coffee. I don’t normally bother too much about rain, after all it’s only water, but we planning to stop in Falaise anyway, so good timing!

The storm seems to have passed now, so it’s time to get our gear together and mount up and ride on to Avranches our stop for tonight.

Catch you in an hour or two.

I was born in a crossfire hurricane…

Dookes

We have been riding around the Somme Battlefield just as the local farmers are finishing the drilling of spring crops, but all year round they have to deal with an altogether much more deadly harvest. That of the tonnes of unexploded munitions that still remain as a silent threat beneath the soil of the Somme. Locally it’s called “La récolte de fer”, The Iron Harvest.
When we stopped near Mouquet Farm, I spotted this rusty old shell in the corner of the adjacent field. That’s my riding gauntlet for scale.

then two miles down the road near High Wood, I spotted this beauty! >

Talking to the owner of our Chambres d’Hôtes about what we had seen, he was quite amused that we did not find abandoned munitions to be normal! He has after all been brought up with such things. Tonight he took us to some private farm land where there is a veritable ammunition dump of old shells and mortar bombs. Some of them were clearly British 13 pounder ammunition, nasty little shells that were basically massive shot gun rounds filled with explosive and steel balls that exploded above ground for maximum effect on enemy troops. >

Then there was this 6 inch calibre fellow, complete with nose fuse, probably high explosive, but it also could be a gas filled shell.>

That’s Viffermans iPhone next to it for scale!

Finally and most scary of all, was this British Mills Bomb grenade. >

It is complete with live fuse and is minus it’s safety pin, a silent killer and very dangerous. Only in the last month were two men killed in Belgium by an item such as this. Apparently, the local council have a bomb disposal truck that collects all munitions once per month, all you do is give the Mayor’s office a call! Grenades are treated a little more urgently and with considerable respect!

Quite an interesting day really!

Catch you soon.

Dookes>

Thiepval Memorial is certainly impressive, both for what it commemorates and also it’s sheer size, it is visible from many miles away on all parts of the Somme. It is very difficult for me to accurately convey just how vast the whole of the battlefield is and how many tragedies unfolded in so many different parts of what is, today, a very beautiful landscape.
Just a couple of kilometres east from the village of Thiepval is the infamous site of Mouquet Farm. As the battle at Thiepval ground to a bloody stalemate, the British Command decided to gain control of the ridge beyond the village in order to create a gap in the German lines. By capturing Mouquet Farm, the British hoped that it would destabilise the German position at Thiepval and lead to its swift capture. On 5th August 1916, three Divisions of The Australian ANZAC Corps who had only recently lost 17,000 men in nearby Poziers, began the assault. A month later, after 6000 more casualties, they were relieved by Canadian forces and twenty five days later the farm fell to the British. The fighting had been hard and bitter, the slopes leading up to the farm a killing ground raked by machine gun and artillery fire. Today it is very different, but the rebuilt farm remains and so does it’s name In the annals of Australian Army history. >

Riding on to our accommodation in Gueudecourt we stopped at London Cemetery, adjacent to High Wood near Longueval.

High Wood was fiercely fought over during the Battle of the Somme until cleared by 47th (London) Division on 15 September 1916. It was lost during the German advance of April 1918, but retaken the following August.

The original London Cemetery at High Wood was begun when 47 men of the 47th Division were buried in a large shell hole in September 1916. Other burials were added later and at the Armistice the cemetery contained 101 graves. The cemetery was then greatly enlarged when remains were brought in from the surrounding battlefields, but the original battlefield cemetery is preserved intact within the larger cemetery.

The cemetery, one of five in the immediate vicinity of Longueval which together contain more than 15,000 graves, is the third largest cemetery on the Somme with 3,873 First World War burials, 3,114 of them unidentified. >

We found that the Cemetery has a most peaceful feeling surrounding the place. Skylarks could be heard singing high above us as we silently paid our respects, indeed the beautiful song of these small birds seems to have filled the air each time we have visited one of the Commonwealth War Grave Commission cemeteries. I will be honest, tears were shed as we walked amongst the gravestones, each one a lost son, father, husband or brother and so many unknown.

“The larks, still bravely singing, fly scarce heard amid the guns below.” John McCrae, died from wounds 1918.

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We rode East out of Albert and within a couple of miles arrived at the small village of La Boiselle. Small is a bit of a misnomer really, the place is little more than a couple of farms a group of houses and a small church. As we rode into the village we noticed to our right an area of ground still pockmarked with shell craters, very thought provoking! To me La Boiselle is hugely significant as it is the first place given in the book where the guns of 94 Siege Battery were located. The entry gives a spot “50 yards West of the ruined church.” Today, the church has been rebuilt and pacing out 50 yards westwards brought us to the village war memorial, how fitting.

It was an amazing feeling to stand there knowing what had been happening nearly 100 years ago.

The local communities have signposted a route around the former battlefields know as “The Remembrance Trail”, it follows many of the most significant actions and locations and seemed the best thing to do. First stop was Lochnagar Crater. 100metres in diameter and 30 metres deep. This is an aerial photo to give you some idea of the scale.;

The Lochnagar mine was an explosive-packed tunnel dug by the Royal Engineer tunnelling companies underneath a German strong point located south of La Boisselle. It was detonated at 7:28 am on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. It contained 24 tons of ammonal and at time was the largest ever man made explosion. The sound of the blast was allegedly heard in London. Today it lies as a reminder of the brutal destruction wrought upon the Somme during those dark days.>

From La Boiselle we headed North for only a couple of miles along the Ancre valley. Along the way we passed woods where glimpses of First World War trenches can be seen. We climbed out of the valley towards the hill top village of Thiepval. This was a significant strategic position during the battle, the Germans initially occupied the high ground and built a sophisticated network of defences. On the first day of the battle the area was targeted as one of the principle targets and 100,000, mostly inexperienced men went into action, following a six day artillery barrage. As the troops went over the top of their trenches they were hit by scything machine gun fire. By evening on that first day over 60,000 British Soldiers were casualties, German losses were 10% of this number. The disaster is still known as the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. Thiepval was finally captured on 27th September 1916 and the Battle of The Somme came to a stalemate end in November of the same year.

In total the British Army, including men from all over the then Empire, had suffered 420,000 casualties in that one battle. Of these, 72,205 were declared missing, their bodies were either never found or identified.

At Thiepval stands a memorial to those missing men. It is the largest British War Memorial in the world and contains the name of each of them. >

The men commemorated here come from all social backgrounds, their ages range from 15 to 60, the average being just 25 years.
Adjacent to the memorial are the graves of French and British soldiers who fell attacking Thiepval; many are simply marked marked as ‘Inconnu’ / ‘Unknown’.
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Cracking run from Normandy to the Somme today! The weather clerk certainly smiled long and hard on us today, after a chilly start we have had perfect sunshine, almost gin clear sky and temperatures into the twenties Celsius!

Harley really loved the Autoroutes and so I believe did our Wingman’s Honda VFR.

We arrived in Albert soon after Midday. It’s a small French town that still retains old charm whilst resisting the pressures of modern globalisation, yes McDo’s have arrived, but are banished well out of the centre! The town suffered terribly during World War One but was almost totally rebuilt as before in the 1920’s. When I climbed off Harley in the town square I was suddenly hit by the enormity of standing where at least one of my Grandfathers had been 98 years ago. I had to go and find a quiet place of my own for a couple of minutes; I think Vifferman understands that on this trip I am needing to grab quite a few of these “Quiet Place” moments and I am grateful for that. Thanks old mate!

Anyway this is the famous Virgin and Child on the Basilica, now restored to is full glory. You can see what sort of day it has been as well! !

…and in 1916.
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It’s been a busy day and to be honest, I’m done in! So hitting the sack now is a good idea. I’ll update with the rest of today’s report tomorrow, I have a lot to write, catch you later!

Dookes

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