Ypres - Belgium

We disembarked at Dunkirk which looks like a flat as a pancake twin to Calais, windswept seashore with extensive breakwaters stretching out far into the sea and a long channel into port. To your left you can see three massive superstructures being built at the shipyard in the distance, marooned like beached whales on the flat featureless landscape. It is not the greatest entry to the world’s top tourist country.

Leaving the ferry we followed the column of vehicles out towards the main auto-routes and almost got mashed by a Polish lorry with trailer that decided to run ahead into our lane without warning, suddenly tons of trailer loomed at the left edge of our car and proceeded to push us into the line of boulders at the side of the road. Fortuitous braking by our driver avoided a nasty collision where being in the passenger seat I would have been the first one to have been 'kissed' by the lorry.

To get to our destination we decided to follow the auto-route to Lille and then head north into Belgium, but somehow we found ourselves heading up the coast from Dunkirk. However this mattered not as all we had to do was splice off to the right at some point and head into the agricultural plains of Belgium towards Ypres, or Leper as they call it here. So soon we were heading east across a flat Romney Marsh type landscape, without hedges but plenty of ditches alongside the rather straight roads.  A preponderance of tractors told us that this was the Belgian agricultural heartland, a ruler straight horizon only broken by the liberal sprinkling of farmsteads and outbuildings. We passed through a succession of villages which were united in their blandness, with colourless, rather utilitarian dwellings often displaying windows with white closed blinds giving them a rather bleak look.

Ypres town centre

Ypres was smashed in the First World War but is now a stylish town with a great centre and rebuilt public buildings notably the magnificent Cloth Hall which dates back to the 13^th century and St Michael’s Cathedral which were both reconstructed after the Great War. The centre is one of those typically wonderful and rather impressive large European cobbled open areas surrounded by a bevy of classy looking buildings, some big, some small, which create a perfect palette for the eye. It is here under a blue sky that you should sit enjoying a Belgian beer and perhaps a chocolate waffle at one of the numerous cafes and bars around the square. If you head down to the eastern end of the square the road funnels into a residential street leading to the famous Menin Gate, constructed in memory of the 300000 soldiers who perished in the Ypres Salient in the Great War. This is a massive structure in the form of an archway into the town centre covered with the names of countless soldiers. Every day the ceremony of the Last Post is carried out at 8pm. When we were present there was an appreciable crowd and a school choir from Gresham’s School in England performing. It is a poignant and touching memorial to a terrible conflict.

Ypres town square

 

The Menin Gate sits astride a canal which runs through the town centre. Tree lined ramparts with  paths run alongside the canal. You can walk or cycle around the canal network in the town on an extensive web of paths. Cycle hire is a great idea for this area as the whole place is set up for bikes. We went to one bike shop after a midday croque monsieur at a bar just on the edge of the town centre. Here the music took us back to the eighties with its Supertramp background beat. In fact there seemed to be a common theme around the town of slightly dated British rock music. The bike proprietor offered us a normal bike for 10 euro and an electric bike for 25 euro for the rest of the day. We thought this was too expensive for just half a day, and he missed a trick because he could have offered us a discount for a few hours, so we didn’t think much of his entrepreneurship. We found another place nearer the town centre at the Ambrosia Hotel, where a friendly young female helped win our custom.

 Ypres is an insightful window onto the awful catastrophe that was the First World War, and the famous Ypres salient has numerous famous battle-sites such as Hill 60, Hill 62, Hoodge Crater, Sanctuary Wood and Passchendaele. All these are within a few kilometres of Ypres. It was a tremendous education for my somewhat partial grasp of an important historical era. The rebuilt Cloth Hall in Ypres has a tremendous museum of the conflict , modern, clear and easy to negotiate, with the option of ascending the tower of the hall to catch great views of the town, including straight down to the Regina Hotel below.

Sanctuary Wood cemetery

The museum has tons of interesting exhibits including of a dig a few years ago at a First World War underground installation where all sorts of items were retrieved from the water and mud like flasks and daily tools. There are also write ups on the different armies involved in the campaign, Belgian, German, French and English, with full uniforms displayed. There is a cart that was used to transport the injured together with exhibits of medical kits and instruments. There are also stories about the air corps and aerial photography, life in the trenches, and the rise of the German stormtrooper as a supersoldier.

We also visited the education museum which is lodged in an old church building just off the town square. This traces the history of education in Belgium through history, but unless you are a real education obsessive you shouldn’t spend more than an hour here. You have to learn to ‘speed read’ museum exhibit notes otherwise you’ll be stuck in the seventeenth century section for half an hour. I loved a picture from medieval times which looked like a Belgian Hogarths woodcut of a couple of teachers in a room looking after a huge class of kids who were doing virtually everything dodgy you could imagine, a scene of chaos that seems not far removed from some modern day classrooms. Nothing changes! There were lots of posters and teaching aids on display including the first Apple computers used in classrooms. It was also interesting to see the trend from more didactic teacher led learning to more child centred learning in recent years, a feature reflecting more universal trends.



Chaos of a medieval classroom!

 

St Michael’s Cathedral is a monster church sitting right next to the Cloth Hall, a couple of titans sitting together in a town that could easily be a lot bigger to accommodate such a pair. Again it was rebuilt after the First World War, and dominates the centre of town. The outside is rather gaunt and grey, but the inside is pleasantly more colourful, with impressive decor and stained glass windows. Craftsmen were working on the floor whilst we were there.

 

Inside of St Michael's Cathedral

The Regina Hotel sitting snug on one corner of the square opposite the Cloth Hall gets a very positive review from us. We all had our own large ensuite double room with very comfortable beds, coffee and tea making facilities including a coffee making machine, and of course TV which I did not switch on at any time. My bathroom was clean and large, although the shower head was attached to a fixture just above the bath which is annoying for a tall person like myself who wants to stand properly underneath a shower jet. Full marks for the power of the blast however. The restaurant was OK, quite expensive, but not the best place we ate at. However we did get bed and breakfast and the breakfast was a more than sufficient start to the day in the restaurant area. The proprietor was a very friendly young Belgian with a good sense of humour.
The fire alarm went off at midnight one night and the proprietor and his aide sped around the second floor making sure everyone was OK and trying to find the culprit. It seemed someone had been smoking in their room, a serious breach of decorum.

Regina Hotel from the top of the Cloth Hall

 

We bought a map of the region around Ypres from the Ambrosia hotel which displayed marked bike routes. This is an excellent idea as it corresponds with signs dotted all around the area directing cyclists down one pathway or another, alongside a canal here, a little country lane there, or along the extensive network of cycle paths alongside all the main roads. ‘Nodes’ on the map are little circles with numbers in that mark the end of a particular stretch of route, and a clear sign marks every node in reality. Its cyclist heaven as you’d expect in the Low Countries, with no more than slight undulations in the landscape and a clear separation from main road traffic. Cobbled streets in Ypres are just a little hard on the tyres and bum!

One day we cycled out on a very rough circular tour south - south east from the town centre and ended up taking a detour to Sanctuary Wood and Hill 62. Here there is a large cemetery for British soldiers with significant numbers of tombstones  marked 'known to God.' Just a few yards down the road is the Sanctuary Wood shop, café and trenches. Here for about ten euro you can see an enormous amount of junk from the first world war but all on a rather disorganised basis. There is a bar where you can have a beer or coffee, but beware of the cats if you don't like them wandering over tables! From the bar you can access the museum which has a right jumble of jetsam and flotsam from the war. We spent a while looking into 'magic boxes through a narrow slit for the eyes to observe tons of black and white photos from the war which gave a realistic 3-D impression. That's quite fun. After perusing the museum you can wander out into a small area of woodland with a network of trenches crisscrossing through, with bits of corrugated iron reinforcing the sides, for surely the trenches would have collapsed a long time ago. There is another separate building full of more First World War paraphernalia, but to be quite frank this museum needs an update overhaul compared with the splendid displays in Ypres.



Sanctuary Wood trenches

 

 

No visit to Belgium would be complete without a trip to that chocolate box capital of chocolatiers and top draw medieval prettiness, Bruges. Head north from Ypres on the autoroutes and you are there within the hour. Plan your parking before you go or you might get badly stung. We investigated a city centre car park first but it was time limited, then we found out that to park on the street was expensive even though there were no apparent signs. A local advised us to park at the rail station for about 2 and a half euro, so off we went to find the station but lost it in the traffic , so just found a side street a bit out of town.

You can swan around Bruges for hours looking at the great buildings, medieval town square, admiring the canal system and getting lost down lots of dinky streets. It’s like a big theme park but what did spoil things a little was the funfair in the town square which was almost as incongruous as the Occupy movement tent city outside St Paul’s Cathedral. You can take a boat around the city centre for seven euro, with an audio talk from the captain extolling the ancient buildings surrounding you, you just have to be prepared to wait a while on the boat for it to be filled up.

 

 

 

You can also do the historium in the town square and participate in a walk back into history by wandering through a succession of themed historical rooms with videos telling a love story against the backdrop of medieval Bruges. An audio guide makes things a lot easier.  Mind you this attraction did get some bad reviews on the internet! If you can slip past a chocolate or pastry shop you will still be caught by a posh cafe or restaurant that will suck you into its clutches.

Chic apartments in Bruges

Canal side in Bruges

Whizzing home from Ypres we decided to stop at Poperinge, a small town about eight miles west of Ypres and on the way to Dunkirk. This town was a big time logistics centre for the British army and a place behind the lines which provided field hospitals and also solace from the horrors of war for many a soldier. Here was Talbot House, an oasis for the British army in the very centre of the town, a large house with its quiet gardens where they could relax, Although not a church house as such, it was a place where the Anglican church had a presence. With its light airy rooms, it is now kitted out for bed and breakfast, and the warden serves you a welcome cup of tea in the downstairs dining room before you take a tour of the house. At the top of the house in the attic is a lovely room done out as a chapel, one of the most attractive I have seen.

Here in Poperinge two death cells are preserved in the Town Hall, and also an execution post in the courtyard used by firing squads.

The area is famous for growing hops and the national hop museum is just up the road from Talbot House.

 

 

 

Talbot House chapel