This morning started with a visit to the tourist office for information about the canal. Construction started last year and will finish in 2030 at a cost of 5.3 billion euros (8.5 billion Canadian dollars). The 107 km long canal will link this area to the Dunkirk canal to enable transportation of goods to and from the ocean port. In fact, there are 20,000 navigable kilometres of rivers and canals across Northern Europe, and the main goal of this new one will be to get trucks off the roads. Apparently the big river boats can carry the load of 220 trucks. Wow!
Here is what the canal looks like at present in Peronne.
And here from a pamphlet is the biggest of the construction projects, a canal bridge, over a kilometre long, which will take boats over a valley. Here it is shown over a highway - imagine driving along with a boat passing over your car!
Péronne has a castle, built in the early thirteenth century by the French King Philippe Auguste to mark and defend the northern boundary of his kingdom. Attacked, refortified, remodelled over the centuries, it was useless to defend against the Germans who occupied Peronne from 1914 - 1917. It was Australian troops who liberated Peronne after fierce fighting that destroyed the city and the castle. Here are some Australian soldiers at what was left of the castle.
Four towers have been rebuilt and behind them is a modern airy museum of WWI.
From the museum, a 2025 aerosol and acrylic painting by French artist BOM.K (yes, that is his name!) called Parade.
A 1924 work, “Buried alive”, by the German artist Otto Dix, who volunteered in 1915, saw heavy fighting, and after the war denounced the brutality of combat. Labelled as a “degenerate “ artist by the Nazis, he was conscripted again into the German army in WWII.
Found objects: it is estimated that war objects will be found in the Somme area for another 700 years, and the French demining services still remove about 100,000 pounds of shells every year.
An item in the museum made me think of my Canadian grandfather who was wounded near here, lost a leg, and convalesced in a British hospital where he met a nurse who followed him to Canada, my grandmother. In hospital my grandfather took up knitting, but in hospitals here it seems embroidery was a way to calm and occupy patients. Here is a sample.
After the museum I resumed my walk, but that tale can wait until tomorrow’s blog.
The juxtaposition of the castle's destruction and the dainty sampler is sobering. Love the peace dove and the fact that he signed it! Impressive investment by the French in clean energy, too.
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