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.

 

 

We start by being very grateful to our generous, stylish, interesting friends, Sarah and Phil who have let us stay in their London pad which is just like them.

I’m writing this while looking at the view of St Paul’s Cathedral from their apartment in the Barbican.

We are in the City of London’s only residential estate.  The Barbican described as a prominent example of British Brutalist architecture, it is also influenced by Le Corbusier.  It was built to house the middle-class in central London, including an arts centre, a kind of utopian paradise,  in an area just near St Paul’s Cathedral that had been bombed in WW2.  But that’s recent history.

What is a Barbican?  A barbican is a fortified outpost or gateway, such as an outer defense to a city or castle, or any tower situated over a gate or bridge which was used for defensive purposes.

As you walk around the Barbican you see remnants of  The Roman Wall.   “From its earliest foundation the Roman city of Londinium was almost certainly surrounded by some kind of fortification. As well as providing defence, the construction of a stone wall represented the status of the city. Using the evidence of excavated coins, archaeologists have dated the construction of the first stone city wall to between ad 190 and 225. 

The wall was about 4km (2.5 miles) long, enclosing an area of about 134 hectares (330 acres); it originally included four city gates with an additional entrance into the legionary fortress at Cripplegate.

We arrived in London, Alex’s first visit in at least 25 years, and Rob’s first ever trip to Europe.  We’d missed the worst of the “Beast from the East” – though we did strike a couple of cold days as you’ll see from photographs.

It was the week that Donald Trump and Theresa May announced they were going to send missiles into Syria.   The thought of missiles being fired  reminded us we are staying on a reclaimed bomb site from the second world war.

London feels so familiar, so many places and accents from TV and the movies, the children’s picture books and nursery rhymes, the history we’re taught, and the stories that come through the music that we have grown up with, not forgetting the Monopoly board.

It took reading the brilliant talk by Richard Flanagan at the National Press Club to remind us of our own history.  He was lamenting the terrible bleakness in our present National leadership but his talk offered hope:

“And yet if we were to have the courage and largeness to acknowledge as a nation both truths about our past, we would discover a third truth, an extraordinary and liberating truth for our future, about who we are and where we might go.

We would discover that though this land and its people were colonised, a 60,000-year-old civilisation is not so easily snuffed out. And the new people who came to Australia, in their dealings with black Australia, were also indigenised, and, in the mash up, Indigenous values of land, of country, of time, of family, of space and story, became strong among non-Indigenous Australians. Indigenous ways, forms, understandings permeated our mentality in everything from Australian rules football to our sense of humour.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/apr/18/richard-flanagan-national-press-club-speech-full-politics-black-comedy

Richard’s speech was beautifully timed for us as all the Commonwealth leaders descended for the CHOGM just around the corner at The Guildhall.

Modern London is such a mix of people from all over the world, we often hear more French being spoken than English.  The fabulous West Indian accent which has now melded with the London accent. It’s a wonderful multicultural town.

We took a “Secret London” Tour with travel journalist Sophie Campbell who met us at the Royal Exchange just opposite the Bank of England.  This 3 hour tour by Sophie really explained the workings and origins of London.  She pointed out the intertwining serpents, not the single snake seen in medical areas, but 2 snakes:  The caduceus which means trade and commerce.  She explained the guilds, or Livery Companies of London which still have enormous power today in terms of voting rights for the local City of London council. The City of London is the little square mile, about 7 thousand people, not Sadiq Khan’s patch who is Mayor of Greater London representing millions of people.

 

Sophie ended the tour by taking us to the modern money making centres: The Bloomberg Building (an outstanding example of sustainable design) also Rothschilds and Lloyds of London.  Her point:  this is the real power and heart of London, it’s not the royals, in fact symbolically the Queen must gain permission to enter the city of London.

She left us at the Leadenhall Poultry market and the story of Old Tom the Goose born in 1797,  who had escaped slaughter by flying up into the rafters of the market place and refusing to come down – he lived to the ripe old age of 37. When he died of natural causes he was buried on the market site.

So beloved was Old Tom that he even made it into the Times Newspaper!

However, you can still raise a glass to Old Tom at the market in the pub which bears his name; Old Tom’s bar.  We had a soda water and ploughman’s lunch which did include smoked duck, but not Goose.

 

The other big international news while we’re been here has been about Facebook and the inappropriate use of personal data.  Mark Zuckerberg has been appearing before Congress.  A lot of  people are now are openly talking about deleting Facebook, but many of them can not quite bring themselves to do it.  It’s not just that we’re addicted, it can be such a good thing.

Within four days of us being in London, Rob had started to gather information on events nearby.  There is so much going on in London, and how would you possibly choose something that would be to your liking?  How do you avoid the tourist traps?  One invitation seemed interesting, to experience the alternative and underground forms of dance, style and musical expression of East London Dance’s “IDENTITY” .  This infused hip hop, breaking, voguing, krump and waacking, some of which we’d never heard of.

Again using the iphone we figured out the right bus to catch

A collaboration East London Dance Groups and Shoreditich Town Hall, a building no longer used as a town hall following Council amalgamations, and fought hard for by the local community to keep as a public space.

The moment we arrived we felt like we’d arrived into a very special and diverse and inclusive community.  Without social media it could have taken months to have stumbled into such a wonderful event, and to have felt so comfortable within this group of young Londoners.

Rob loves a map, and although our 10 days remained in inner London we did extend to the edge of the map twice, both times to some beautiful natural areas. Walking on Hampstead Heath and at London Wetlands

And just in case you think Crocs are “so last year” – these were for sale at the very cool Dover Street Markets

We watched a couple of grand old people talk about trees in David Attenborough’s The Queen’s Green Planet.  It was charming but also some soft diplomacy from the Queen on Climate Change.  Beautifully Prince Harry made a joke about the fact that travels the world planting trees, but then turned the conversation to say he couldn’t think of a more important thing to do.  It was a lovely show.

Sadly her corgi Willow, the last in the line of corgis she’s bred since she was 18 died while we were here.  As dog lovers we send our condolences.

Other random pics