One last day of historical antics in Europe

And thankfully Monday saw the number of people in Ypres mercifully reduced. I made my way around the few final sites I intended to get to - Messines Ridge, Armentieres and, hidden a long walk into another forest, Plugstreet -  mindful that there is a lot more that I could do but deciding to save it for another time, when I can do it properly.

Messines village from the launching point of the Allied attack, NZ Memorial left of centre

The ruins of the church at Messines, as painted by Adolf Hitler, who was treated and stayed in the basement while a young soldier in WW1

Messines Church today. Creepy Hitler connections. No good coffee nearby though.

After nine days of non stop history-ing and some quite significant moments I was, it is fair to say, in need of a bit of a break. I even decided to forgo the Flanders Fields museum in the middle of Ypres, conscious that there were still crowds of Canadians everywhere. Knowing that there will be many things I want to come back to, this initial foray was only ever intended to be as an introduction and getting the lay of the land.

I did, in the mid afternoon, decide to call it a day on the WW1 front and retire for a dash of culture, with the crowds thinned I made my way back to the lovely Ypres town square and got myself a nice outdoor table at a pub/restaurant ('The Trumpet' I believe) and had a couple more large lagers, and picked a nice Flemish Stew from the menu (well experienced in local culture you see)... The waitress then of course informed me that their kitchen did not reopen until 5pm. This despite the fact that the place was still thronging with tourists everywhere, and that the neighbouring restaurants who were serving food were full almost to capacity inside and out, while the ones who were not had almost no customers. Europe... Naturally I moved next door, sat down, ordered a Flemish Stew and a beer, and had them within a few minutes. And I will happily say the stew was very good. But with chips. Again. Always with the flipping chips.

The morning of the 11th saw me rise with, unsurprisingly, no clear plan of attack but a good-enough idea of what I needed to do and how I was going to do it. Maybe. Sort of. Which is always the best way to travel. I turned my wagon westward and kicked its futuristically asthmatic powerplant up to full noise, aiming for a coastal town called De Panne, for no other reason but that it seemed to be a place to go. The drive was pretty quick and easy, I got there and found a nice enough looking seaside town full of as-yet empty summer apartments and the usual beachside attractions. From there I headed down the coast to Dunkirk, just because you obviously should call at Dunkirk if you are near there, and followed my nose to the famous beaches where the mass Allied evacuation took place. Standing on the beaches of Dunkirk is another one of those personal travel milestones for me. It was good.

Dunkirk seemed nice, and obviously like much of the region had a massive amount of history on offer for exploring, with signs and billboards up for various WW2 attractions. I coincidentally parked near one of these attractions, advertised as having significant importance with many major exhibits. Naturally some Canadians were arriving to see it. Naturally, it was closed.

For those mentioning my lack of Obscure Music References I apologise and will work to make up for it. Currently playing on my B&Ws is a very good band called Castanets who have been around for a long time making good tunes with little fanfare. Their track 'You Are The Blood' was covered/sampled by both Buck 65 and Sufjan Stevens on a charity compilation album with awesome results, highly recommend listening in that order... Castanets version then Buck 65 then Sufjan.

From Dunkirk it was further off down the coast to Calais, most recently famous for The Jungle immigrant camp, now a bare site with high fences. I was glad I wasn't heading the other way on the motorway as a broken truck in one lane had caused a tail-back of about 3km. I did my lap of the town to find the train station and then wound my way out of the centre to the gas station rental car drop-off point and unloaded my kit. I took a final look at the grubby Toyota and with a complete absence of affection turned and left it behind. I can usually find some quirky redeeming feature, or at least some kind of flawed charm, to any car. But if that is the future you can keep it.

With my pack on my back and my camera bag on my front I headed off toward town again. It was warm and I got a bit of a sweat up in the 1.8 or something km. From what the internet had told me... yes, that old chestnut... there would be shuttle buses running to the port from the train. I passed the bus stop on the way but found nothing there indicating ferry shuttles. The train station up the road, past an extremely impressive hotel with clock tower, was fairly dead apart from a bunch of French police vans (ever-present these days) and a few dodgy looking taxi drivers.

A backpacker-looking girl busked for nobody in the sunshine. I stopped and downed packs to dry out a bit. No shuttles came. There was nobody to really ask. I consulted a city map outside. There was nothing about passenger ferries, but the car ferry port  was about 1.5km away. Conscious of time of day and how far I had to go, I memorised the route and set off again. Along the way I went through the cafe area and the promise of cold beer taunted me constantly. I marched on.

I saw more signs for the car ferry along the way. The closer I got to where the port facility was supposed to be the less pedestrian friendly it looked. The nagging feeling that perhaps the passenger terminal was nowhere near the vehicle kept popping up. Was it in a different area? Was it a whole different ferry?? Was I going to turn up to find you in fact had to buy tickets and catch a shuttle from  in town somewhere? I passed the area where The Jungle had been, now ringed with high fences, beyond which there were more and higher fences, topped with generous coils of razor wire. Security pretty serious there now... It was hot. I sweated. I noted my boots were not great for walking, not that they were meant to be. I hoped I could find a person somewhere, maybe even  find a taxi back to town if I needed to given the time was getting on. I worried slightly that I was going to wind all the way down the fenced lanes to find the footpath endeing and a security gate in my way. Eventually I found a steep ramp leading up to an overpass into the massive port that said 'Pedestrians'... Which was more promising than anything else I had seen. Although the whole place still seemed like I was walking into a forgotten backlot in a post apocalyptic industrial POW camp.

In the end there is a reason why trusting my gut is usually the right way to go, across. The walkway and down the ramp I found a very civilised foot-passenger check-in area where a nice lady sold me a ticket on a P&O ferry leaving shortly. After about 15 minutes the assembled foot passengers were loaded onto a bus and taken across to another building to clear customs,  French departures and UK arrivals. They all seemed happy enough with us, and we were loaded back bus. We pulled up alongside the ferry ahead of a couple of coaches of ... Canadian school kids... And rushed to get up the winding ramp structure and onto the boat before them. The ferry was slightly more upmarket than the one on the way over. The bar was annoyingly closed, no so much because I wanted a drink but because I had learned on the previous trip that it is the best place to get away from the hoards  of families and kids. Before long, once the coaches and cars on the vehicles decks had emptied out, the ferry was swamped with Canadians again. Such is life. I got a beer, sorry should say 'I got a terrible warm British ale' and some bad sandwiches from the food court and went out on the rear deck to watch France disappear. It was at touch sad to go, again, it did feel like leaving something behind. But a lot had been discovered. And I was travelling again, and making it up as I went, which is the best bit, so I was looking forward. Well, after I finished looking back, at France.

Finally a view of the famous cliffs. Through filthy windows.

On the other side it took an age to disembark, I think due to an issue with the passenger bridge. eventually buses came onto the vehicle decks and transported us to the passenger terminal. Some more UK border folks eyed us up and picked a few people to talk to, mostly about cigarettes. I clearly looked non threatening. From there it was out the door and freedom. A couple of taxis waited to take people into Dover. I decided to walk. It was hot, I sweated, pubs taunted me. I resisted. I followed my nose to the train station and a nice chap sold me some train tickets to where I needed to go...four tickets for four trains no less. It was 4pm. Some yob in his 20's wearing a tracksuit argued with the station officials who said his ticket wasn't valid. He appeared to be on a substance of some sort. His incoherent, toothless, grubby little companion, old enough to be his dad, clutched a bottle of some sort of blue liquid. When my train finally came they got on and en route had a long discussion with the ticket man, because apparently the transit police were waiting for them at the other end. In the end he decided their ticket was ok. Apparently according to friend in tracksuit "Yeah dats wha  I told them fellas but they jus likes to harass me like". Indeed.

I made my three connections and took all my four trains in four hours and thought I did pretty well. I was greeted by  friendly faces at the other end at  around 2030hrs. Job done. Thus ended Europe, now back for more of the U.K. Fear not though,  I will have some more thoughts to share on France and Belgium before we are done with this one.