London to Paris

Many people insisted we use the Eurostar to travel between London and Paris, the train in a tunnel under the channel efficiently delivering people from one city to the other within hours.  We chose a different route.

Having been hurtled in a capsule through through the atmosphere into London, Rob really wanted to travel at a slower pace and to get the sense of leaving the UK and arriving on the European mainland.  We decided to catch the train to Dover, have an afternoon wandering over the white cliffs, stay at a village pub and catch the Ferry across the channel the next day.  We had been told many times that we would probably get sea sick and the cliffs would be shrouded in fog and we wouldn’t see anything any way.  (We’ll get to this)

You are whizzed out of London from the beautiful St Pancras Train station.

 The latest Tracy Emin sculpture is a huge pink neon sign in her writing saying “I want my time with you” her message on BREXIT.

Here is another sculpture about meeting and farewell: The Meeting Place by Paul Day

Music too, via a piano, donated by Elton John, someone had stopped to play Queen’s “We are the Champions”.

Arriving in Dover, we were greeted immediately by the cry of the gulls, so familiar from the soundtracks to movies and TV shows set in coastal Britain, and completely different from Australian seagulls cry.

 

The weather turned out to be perfect, clear and still and just a little cooler that the unseasonal hot weather of the previous days.

We came to see and walk on the White Cliffs.  We stayed in the village of St Margarets in the White Cliffs Hotel.  A really lovely family run pub.  It was a little Fawlty Towers, but without the rudeness.  Gavin, definitely not Basil, in fact he’s a MAMIL, heading out on Sunday morning  bike ride.  His lovely daughter in fact joked, “we’re a bit like Fawlty Towers”, but they couldn’t have done more for us.  (just on hotels RANT ALERT – why have people done away with the top sheet and just given you a very hot doona? – NO!, Also what is it with having the bathtub at the foot of your bed???  A bit splashy for my liking)

We walked down to the beach at St Margarets, where Rob quickly dipped his toe in the water, there were people swimming, but he decided against the swim to France, no wetsuit.  The house behind Rob was once owned by Noel Coward who then sold it to Ian Fleming.

 

 

The views of the white cliffs of Dover were beautiful, and the sense of anticipation as we approached the skyline of Calais.

Since the Eurostar and the advent of cheat air flights throughout Europe, not many foot passengers use the ferry any more.  Most of the people we spoke with were taking their cars across the channel, often just to spent a day or two in France

Arriving in Calais was a strange experience, there is no longer a bus service to the train.  we caught a Taxi to a train station a long way out of town in the middle of nowhere.

Our Taxi driver in his electric Tesla,  was keen to show us its impressive rate of acceleration.  It was a reminder to us how slow Australia has been in its uptake of electric cars. France way ahead.

We also noticed the double line of fencing with razor wire rolled along the top, an immediate reminder of the refugees who have fled Africa, and the middle east trying to make it to the UK.

Train trip to Amiens Am-ee-ah.  Very specific pronunciation.  Am as in I am…and ends with a sharp “a” .  I kept being corrected by the English who say Arm-ee-ons.  Not correct.

The train from Calais followed the Somme River valley through Boulogne-en-Ville to Amiens.

The first thing we noticed in Amiens were the Australian flags.

 

 

Before our trip Alex spent time  brushing up her school-girl french with Babbel online.  Many people said “don’t bother everyone speaks English”.  THIS IS NOT TRUE.  Checking in to our small “House in the Town” hotel, Michelle had very little English.  It took Alex’s pretty bad French and Michelle’s broken English to get through.  In fact in most cases in Amiens we needed Alex’s French.  Paris may be different but away from classic tourist areas, it’s good to have some French.  Luckily we have a distinctive description for Rob as a meeting point, look for “un grande homme avec chapeau”

Our one full day in Amiens was huge.  In the morning, after a beautiful French breakfast, bagette, confiture, ham, cheese, coffee, warm milk, freshly squeezed orange juice, we set off on a full-day tour of the battlefields with Oliver of Chemins d’Histoire.

We cried when we arrived at the memorial in Villers-Bretonneux, the terrible loss, a place of tragedy in such beautiful countyside, rolling fields of wheat and the yellow canola in flower.  The Australian choir was practising for the ANZAC day ceremony, our tears started to flow.

But we had some comic moments too.  Alex bumped into Stephanie Brantz, the MC and also Estelle Muspratt who works for Dept of Veteran Affairs screeched:  “Alex what are you doing here?”, I last saw “Stella” at the Ainslie shops.  And then we noticed the seating arrangements.

Just along from this pairing  a seat for Tony Abbott.  We met Warren Snowden later who had a crooked smile about his seat: wedged between Abbott and Derryn Hinch.

But apart from this moment, it was a very sad day. A day of remembering and never forgetting.

The small village of Villers-Bretonneux is described as the “8th State of Australia”.  Away from the formal memorials, the little school-house is really moving.  There was a modest exhibition by the local school students and that meant more to me that the $100 million dollar John Monash Centre (which we didn’t see as it was closed before the grand opening).

Rob had some personal reflections

As a child I remember asking my Grandmother about a cross that sat amongst her various ornaments.  From my memory it looked like copper and brass.  It was always kept polished.  She told me it was made for her by my Grandfather who was away at the war. The horizontal piece was a bullet and the vertical piece a large shell, with a base that might have been the cap of a larger shell.

My Grandfather died just weeks before I was born, and my recollections of any stories by my Grandmother are vague, but I do remember the official photos of him in uniform and her saying that his feet were damaged by his time in the trenches in France.

Touring the battle fields does make it much more personal and I emailed mum who sent me details that he enlisted in September 1915 to the 10th Battalion, 14th Reinforcement. He was repatriated to London with “trench-foot” and pneumonia, and returned to the field in France.

The small museum at Villers-Bretonneux that had photographs of Australians that must have been similar to my Grandfather’s experience.

 

We were really in Amiens to attend Chris Latham’s The Diggers Requiem in the Cirque Jules Verne.

This sell-out concert received a standing ovation and Chris, the orchestra and soloists were called back 5 times by the audience.  Here is my response I sent to Chris and three of the composers:

Being in the audience last night for The Diggers Requiem in Amiens was a hugely emotional experience.  Filled with beauty, sadness, memory it did what all great musical experiences do and that is to make us think deeply and feel profoundly. It really is music that takes us to these places and that’s what happened to us last night.  It was also incredible for Chris to ask us to sing.  It’s like we were aching to join in, to not just empathise but to be part of it. I who cannot sing well, loved the physical feeling of making music.  The mesmerising chant.

In contrast to this huge crowd, a smaller but no less emotional gathering the next morning. (see below)

So many times we bemoan the evils of social media.  But Chris has been able to discover links to family, dead and alive, through the internet.   An Englishman called Bob had discovered a box of slides which showed a journey to France by a woman wanting to find the grave of her husband killed on the Somme.  Bob found the marker: S.G Latham and then put out a call on the internet – did anyone know S.G Latham?  It turns out it is Chris Latham’s great uncle.  He was Lieutenant Colonel S.G. Latham

He was killed on the 24th of April 1918, which also happened to be his 46th Birthday.

We gathered by his Graveside – the family, Chris, his newly found cousin Alan, Chris’s Mum, Bob and his partner.  Chris played a lament on the violin.

Just to round off our visit,  I want to quote two of our great journalists writing this morning on this period in our history.

First David Marr:  “The business of remembering is taken seriously up here, not least because the valley of the Somme looks the most peaceful landscape on Earth. In late April the country is covered in sheets of early wheat and canola in flower and patches of pale ploughed land waiting to be sown.”

On the new John Monash centre David wrote:

This is not a museum. It’s what they call in the trade these days, an experience. If you want to explain slavery and civil rights in America or the battles on the western front, this is what you do. Walls light up. Old photographs fade into freshly filmed live action. Actors struggle and die. Orchestras play. Howitzers blaze away. Gas seeps through the floor.

A few glass cases hold mementos of battles fought round here. There are guns and badges and rusted weapons, some dug up on the site. My grandfather Jack’s war diaries are beautifully preserved here, one held together with a safety pin as it has been for a century.

But the Monash Centre is not for scholars. This is entertainment, cutting edge and thrilling in its way, but entertainment. Crowds will no doubt come. Tour operators are already rejigging their itineraries to fit an hour or so for their customers in this dazzling maze.

David ends by urging us to go to a grave in the fields.  He’s right.

Also the marvellous Paul Daley about looking to tragedies on our own soil:

“And after walking past all of those blonde headstones in all of those foreign war cemeteries, replete with their militarily-clipped lawns and fragrant rosemary bushes, all of these places that dignify so many terrible deaths, I feel like I’ve learnt far more about what my country is by looking inward, by walking this landscape and determining what happened within it.

So, last week, in the name of remembrance, in the remote corner of a sheep station in central New South Wales, I visited the grave of the Indigenous warrior Windradyne, who led resistance against the British in the Bathurst war of the 1820s. We walked across a dusty, desiccated paddock, dotted with ancient scar trees and sprinkled with stone artefacts, to reach him.

This was an Australian battlefield. On this continent.”  Thanks Paul.

La Greve (The Strike)

Ahh, The French and their strikes.  We have a hit a period of rolling strikes for 3 months.  The French rail unions are facing off against President Macron who is not blinking.

So how to get from Amiens to Paris?  Blabla Car!  This is a ride-sharing system in Europe. So I signed up and found a ride with Christian.  He sent me a message:  “Sory, no spic anglais!!”  (YOU NEED SOME FRENCH EVERYONE.)  Christian is a jurist (lawyer) who commutes to Paris and likes to have someone to talk to in the car.  He got Rob in the front seat who doesn’t speak French.  He seemed to take a liking to Rob despite language difficulties.

We met Christian at the train station, I told him to look for me in “echarpe rose vif et mon mari un grand homme avec chapeau”   Five us squeezed into a very small car and off we went to Paris.  Luckily Pierre sitting in the back middle seat had just returned from Australia and acted as translator.  He was a lovely guy who helped us at the metro in Paris (in a pretty seedy part of town).  BTW small cases essential, we wouldn’t fitted with bigger luggage.

Christian, Pierre, Alex and Emmanuella (who is from Cote d’ivoire and is studying law in Amiens).  Note Christian and Pierre’s sneakers.  They are a very big thing here.

Arrived to traffic in Paris, really bad because of the strike and witnessed refugees from Africa and Syria.  2 girls in hijab walking between cars Syria with signs saying: Syria SOS

Traffic so bad Christian dropped us at Porte de la Chapelle Station. to the north of Paris. How to get to central St Germain des Pres?  The lovely Pierre helped us buy metro tickets. Thanks Pierre!

3 nights after leaving London – we arrived in Paris in our very central hotel minutes from The Seine and Louvre and welcome Jardins de Tuileries.