Tues Sept 30. Lens. 28.4 km.

A lovely day for walking.

I followed the Via Francigena to the National Cemetery of Notre-Dame-de-la-Lorette, where 40,000 French WWI soldiers who died in north-eastern France are buried.

The mothers and wives of these soldiers had a basilica built in the cemetery. Veterans are always present here to accompany visitors.

Particularly touching is the “Anneau de la mémoire”. Inside this ring are tablets inscribed with the names of all 580,000 soldiers of all nationalities and both sides of the war who died in this “Nord Pas-de-Calais” region in WW1.

Then, following Google Maps (again, totally impressive - sent me by bicycle paths and country lanes) walked to Vimy. This land was given to Canada for graves and commemoration. When four Canadian Divisions, fighting together for the first time, took the hill in 1917, it represented a turning point for our confidence and national pride. On this striking memorial monument are inscribed the names of the 11,285 Canadian soldiers who died in France in WWI.

This is the view from the top of the hill the Canadians took in the battle. It isn’t very high.

Canadian students work here year round to give tours of the trenches that have been preserved. The German and Canadian trench lines seem absurdly close to each other. The holes in the ground from shelling have not been filled in.

I saw at least five groups of French schoolchildren visiting. The grounds somehow feel Canadian - in part I think because the site is spread out and visitors have to walk quite long distances through a forest of pine trees. In the two cemeteries at Vimy are Canadian and other commonwealth graves - all beautifully kept.

I have visited Vimy before, with my parents. My grandfather was wounded near here and spent a year in a hospital in England recovering. It was there that he met my grandmother, a nurse, who came to Canada in 1920. They got married near the docks in Montreal on the day her ship arrived.

All the towns and villages in this area were completely and utterly destroyed in the war. Walking to Lens, my destination for the evening (I’m doing my own thing now, no longer on the Via Francigena) I saw some lovely rebuilding, like this village library.

Comments

September 5

I landed at Heathrow this morning at 6 am, a very inconvenient time to get a room and rest! But my student residence accommodation includes a common room with handy couches for a short snooze. The neighbourhood abuts on Regent’s Park, complete with gorgeous flowerbeds. The Queen Mary’s rose garden in Regent’s Park. My neighbourhood wandering took me to the Wallace House which used to be one of the homes of the marquesses of Hertford. The Hertfords were fabulously rich, mainly from extensive land holdings, and in the 18th and 19th centuries avid art collectors. They obviously had Trumpian home decorating tastes. Here are two of their many clocks, all of which need frequent ‘fine tuning’, it appears. I particularly liked two 18th c British paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds in their collection: Mrs Carnac and the hauntingly strange Strawberry Girl.

Sat Oct 4. London.

19 days walking on pilgrimage paths for a total of 395 km or 245 miles on foot (not that arduous - an average of 20.7 km per day, and lots of ‘rest days’ staying put in one place). All of that undone in 1.5 hours on a Eurostar train. I’m not entirely sure what conclusion I’m drawing from that comparison, but I’m back where I started, in London. On my way to my lodgings (I’m staying in a Buddhist retreat centre) I decided to visit the first visitable place to cross my path, which turned out to be the Foundling Museum. Horrified by the sight of infants being abandoned on 18th c London streets, a prosperous seaman, Thomas Coram, spent 17 years raising awareness and funds, as well as obtaining royal permission to build London’s first children’s charity. Opened in 1739, the Foundling Hospital continued its work until the 1950s, and actually is still active as a non-institutional resource, under a different name. Here is a photo of it in 1935. So many similarities to ...

Fri Oct 3. Lille.

I had a lovely day in Lille. In fact, all my days on this trip have been lovely! In the morning I went to the very large Palais des Beaux-Arts. This museum holds the largest collection of works of art of any French institution outside Paris. The collection started at the time of the French Revolution as the works of art of the nobility and of the church were confiscated, and continued on apace due to various enthusiastic municipal governments. By 1892 the collection was so large and important that the Palais, its current house, was constructed in the centre of town. The first fun aspect was the recent work of the Swiss artist Felice Varini who used the museum’s interior as his canvas. The oldest works of art are in the ‘basement’, beautifully displayed. Look at the marvellous three dimensionality of this (flat) marble plaque sculpted by Donatello (c 1435) showing Salomé dancing for the head of John the Baptist. And modern technology brings statues alive by giving them back t...

Celia Walks

Search This Blog