The killing fields

After lunch we unloaded the bikes from the rack and planned a trip along the 'velo route of remembrance' marked on the leaflet from the tourist office. The route wended its way through a park and some fishing ponds, along minor roads through the villages of Aveluy and Authuille, then climbed out of the valley of the l'Ancre to the low ridge of Thiepval where Lutyen's memorial to the missing stands overlooking the Somme battlefields.

The road to Thiepval ridge - in the battle of the Somme every metre of ground gained cost 1000 casualties.

It was a ride of about 12 kilometres, a gentle pedal taking less than 20 minutes. It took 141 days for the French and British troops to move their front line 12 kilometres forward across this same terrain. In the process 1.2 million men were killed or wounded, including 72,000 British soldiers whose bodies were never found. These are the missing who are commemorated at Thiepval. It is impossible not to be profoundly affected by the catastrophic loss of life. However, it is also a deeply infuriating place.

Luyten's Memorial for the missing dominates the ridge

The carnage visited upon the youth of Europe resulted from the blind nationalism and imperialist ambition of the continent's predominantly aristocrat ruling elites. It was not a war with winners and losers, everyone lost, even the instigators. The 'Great Powers'' world of empire and privilege went into inexorable decline afterwards. Yet only a year elapsed between the cessation of hostilities on the 11th November 1918 and the inauguration of the first 'Armistice Day' act of remembrance with its scripted assertion of valiant sacrifice linked to national pride. When we saw Lutyen's vast triumphalist edifice rising above the killing fields I think it was the chilling dissonance between rhetoric and reality which provoked Gill's claustrophobic sense of sadness and my quiet fury

The symbolism of the Triumphal Arch seems a strange choice of style given the monument's purpose.

The names of the 72,000 British soldiers whose remains were never identified are recorded on the monument.

I was struck by the contrast of  photographs of the pomp and circumstance of the inauguration

with grrim pictures of the aftermath of the battle.

"I think we should go" Gill said. I nodded, took a few photographs, shared them on Facebook accompanied by a short angry sentence or two; then we rode back down the hill through the fields of pale yellow stubble and patches of trees that hinted at autumn. Hardly a soul was about, the villages quiet, no traffic, a peaceful day, cloudless and warm, but the utter silence recalled the thundering guns and every white chalk stone strewn along the verge of the un-hedged fields became a fragment of bone.

I wonder now, a few hours later, if my visceral response had been ill-judged, whether the mythologising of the war found in the rituals and iconography of rememberance was in fact the only possible human response to the enormity of a catastrophe that claimed over 30 million lives. It started with a diplomatic miscalculation abetted by the Kaiser's decision to take his usual Baltic cruise, and the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Grey, who went fly-fishing on the Test just as the armies on continental Europe began to mobilise. Politicians across the continent predicted the war would be over in a matter of weeks. The armistice four years later was followed by a treaty whose terms mixed score-settling territorial gain with a desire to shift the blame for the debacle entirely onto Germany, a ploy which more or less made a re-run of hostilities twenty years later inevitable. Given these circumstances, is it any wonder that the thought that the losses were needless and the war a terrible mistake proved utterly unpalatable, so myths of noble sacrifice and patriotic bravery were readily embraced by the Generals, political leaders, veterans and the bereaved?

Even today the catastrophe is masked behind a euphemism - 'sacrifice'.

What is incomprehensible and infuriating is that today's centenary events make insufficient attempt to challenge the prevailing mythologies of remembrance and seem a missed opportunity to reposition WW1 within European history to give greater credence to the facts. Some attempts have been made: the major museum at Peronne interprets events giving equal weight to all combatants and provides commentary in English, French and German; last year the centenary of the Battle of Verdun was marked by a ceremony led jointly by President Allende and Chancellor Merkel asserting how the event was a catastrophe for both nations and warning of the dangers of resurgent nationalism. 

Yet all the commemorative material about the Battle of the Somme that we were given by the campsite reception and Albert's Office de Tourisme seemed far from balanced and impartial. Many of the brochures were produced with the support of an EU Regional Development Fund project involving local councils from Southeast England, Picardy and Holland. There was no German involvement whatsoever, and though maps showed British and French military cemeteries, the large German cemetery at Fricourt was omitted.

I found the omission of any German involvement strange given the EU support.

Maybe all of this is an over-reaction, but I don't think so. The visitor centre at Thiepval provides little cardboard poppies so that visitors can leave a short message. Almost all reiterated conventional eulogies of commemoration, about sacrifice and bravery. The soldiers of the Somme did not sacrifice themselves, they were sacrificed - lambs to the slaughter. Nor, I suspect, were they especially brave, a few maybe, but most were simply ordinary young men trapped in terrible circumstances who simply hoped they might survive.

The visitor centre encourages people to record their thoughts on small poppies places at the entrance.

most expressed condolence in conventional terms

This message seemed nearer to the truth.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the centenary brochures were small ads taken out by individuals and organisations who had seized on the anniversary as a business opportunity. Horse and carriage rides around the battlefields were on  offer. Some chambre d'hote owners advertised that they could provide tours with expert guides, but the copy about 'remembering the young men who had given their lives for our freedom' did not give me confidence in these guides' expertise. No way was WW1 a struggle for freedom. At the time the countries involved were either autocracies or fledgling democracies that had not quite got around to enfranchising one half of their populations. Less sentimental cant and more respect for historical accuracy would have made the morbid sales pitches a tad more acceptable.

It seems to me the only respectful act of commemoration to the millions slaughtered is to commit ourselves to ensuring that Europe never tears itself apart in such a way again. Nationalism is on the march, but if the peoples of the continent are unhappy with the current attempt at a European Union, then we need to reform and renew the project. If we all demand 'our country back' them at some point this process will go awry, and our offspring again perish in a renewed European conflict like their forebears at the Somme. The sentimentality and undiguised nationalism surrounding the acts of commemoration and the tone much of the supplementary material does not bode well. I don't think we have learned from the terrible carnage of two world wars. It's depressing.

At the foot of the Thiepval rise is a remote British cemetery called 'Blighty Valley'. It's a few hundred metres from the road down a grassy track. A little more than a thousand victims are interred here, more than half unidentified. It seems infrequently visited yet still the place is impeccably tended. On this beautiful late summer's afternoon the oak leaves had just begun to fall, dropping silently, yet inexorably among rows of identical white marble headstones. A quiet golden light flooded the landscape. The place invites contemplation. What can you say to the fallen? Rest in peace and we promise to do our utmost to never let it happen again, not through rituals of remembrance, but by understanding how the catastrophe occurred in the first place. To misquote Jefferson, peace as well freedom requires eternal vigilance.

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The resurrection of Albert

By now we were getting towards our three day limit when living in aires becomes a bit gritty and both Maisy and her increasingly crusty owners need the services and facilities offered by a camp site. Cheap sites in August are tricky to come by even in France. In the end Camping Le Velodrome in Albert seemed to tick all the boxes (cheap, sort of on the way) so off we went. Albert was simply a spot on the map between Laon and Amien, we had no idea what to expect. As it happens Albert was the headquarters and supply depot for the British army during the battle of the Somme, whose centenary is being marked this year. When we booked into the site we were handed a clutch of glossy brochures. They explained the town's role in WWI, pointed out the sites and provided a map of nearby points of interest on the waymarked 'route of remembrance.

We needed bread for lunch so we walked into the town centre. You cannot miss Albert's most famous landmark. Notre Dame de Brebières is an enormous and rather ghastly basilica built in a neo-Byzantine style in the 1870s. The church's fame comes from the fact that the giant gold statue of the Virgin on top of the tower was knocked into a horizontal position when it was used by German gunners as target practice in 1916. This became a a subject of superstition among British soldiers who believed that the war would only end when the so called 'leaning virgin' toppled completely.

Neo Byzantine - is this the most ghasrly style of architecture ever?

WW1 artefacts outside Notre Dame de Brebières 

By the end of the war the town was utterly wrecked and rebuilt using the original street plan but in a modern art deco style. It's an interesting example of inter-war town planning especially as it is contemporary with Welwyn Garden City, so invites comparison with British ideas about urban renewal in the early part of the last century, well it does if you are an enthusiast for 20th Century vernacular architecture like me.

Albert 1916

Albert 2016

Re-built in a contemporary Art Deco style

Interesting 1920s decorative detail

We were unsure what the hall was behind the tourist office - a gymnasium perhaps?

Again, interesting Art Deco motifs, including, poignantly, stained glass poppies.

Sadly the redevelopment did not stretch to the monstrous church which was restored to all its pre-war ghastliness complete with gold topped belfry. In a way, like much of the area, Albert suffers from its association with the catastrophe of the Battle of the Somme which overshadows the subsequent story of renewal. For example from the 1930s onwards the town has had a thriving aviation industry. Through merger by the 1970s this had developed as the basis of Aero Spatiale, which then became a subsidiary of Airbus.

A publicity shot of the interior Aero STELIA's  factory in Albert

The visit to the tourist information furnished us with a cycle track map, and a snippet of information that the collection of blue cuboid buildings on the edge of town manufacturers the cockpit and avionics for the A380, the world s biggest airliner. As we wandered back to the van, baguette and paté duly purchased we mulled over the thought that rememberance may be necessary but we need to celebrate the here and now too. We  easily  become enmeshed in a narratives which dwell on the past or current news that concerns the corrupt and uncertain present, but not all human activity is negative; we build as well as destroy. Though as it transpired the afternoon was destined to test such optimism.

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Moment cathedral, moment goat, moment castle...

When we planned this trip we talked about heading down to Nancy or going through Luxembourg to explore some of the cycle tracks in Germany's Saarland. One of the places we planned to stay happened to be near the bridge at Schengen. I imagined photographing the pair of us waving the little paper EU flag given to us at the Festival of Europe in Aix as if to say - "Hey fellow citizens, we're not all Brexiteers you know, some of us liked the idea of a continent without borders and even could utter the phrase 'ever closer Union' without even the slightest nervous tic." In the end practicality won over sentiment, and concious that the whole trip had been designed as an 'extra' on a shoestring budget, we concluded the additional tank of diesel was not justifiable. 

So we started plotting a route back to Dunkerque, as ever trying to apply our rule of thumb about visiting places we had never been to before. Gill summoned up the ACSI app and Campercontacts on her phone, then rummaged in the book cupboard for our out of date All The Aires Guide. After staring at the road atlas and double checking the route on Google maps, finally she found two possible placed to say that would fit in with my vague desire to visit Laon. Whether a visit to the town does fit into our rule of thumb about exploring new places is a matter of debate. Gill is convinced we visited here years ago with her sister and I have no reason to doubt this; however, I have no recollection of it whatsoever. So, a question - does somewhere you have visited before, but can't now remember fit our guidelines? If so, then perhaps in the future we will be coming back to all the places we've been to recently. Anyway, we hatched a bit of a plan: park in the aire below Laon's walls, have lunch, then have a look at the place before heading off to either the camp site at La Frére, or the aire at Cucy-le-Chateau. Easi-peasi!

Room for six mohos under the wall at Laon - free, but no service point.

So without ado we found ourselves parked at Laon. The city dominates the surrounding plain from its situation on top of a craggy bluff. It has been occupied for thousands of years, but developed into a significant place in the late 700s during the reign of Pepin the Short, Charlemagne's father. I like the Carolingian dynasty not least because chroniclers of the time were not averse to giving their rulers rude nicknames. Other illustrious Carolingians included. Charles the Bald, Louis the Stammerer and Lothar the Lame. This seems an eminently sensible way to ensure our self appointed rulers don't get too up themselves. So an Early Medieval chronicler might dub our lot as George the Impeded, Lizzie the Morose, Charles Juglugs, and William the Harmless. 

Laon today is a pleasant old town surrounded by ancient walls. What makes it exceptional is its 13th Century cathedral. Sadly, for Gill, I am quite enthusiastic about Gothic cathedrals and remember more than you might expect of what Dr. Crossley taught me about them back in 1974. This resulted in her having to trail along as I whittered on about the building being a transition from the earlier Soissonaise style's concern with articulating space, to the later High Gothic's interest in expressing structural coherence. In this mode even I get bored with my own obsessions, goodness knows what Gill is thinking.

a truly sculptural building

The portal figures reflect a growing humanism in the way they interact.

The towers remind me of an Escher drawing

pale stone - pearly light.

the lantern tower

A bestiary in stone decorates the towers

Briefly we toyed with the idea of staying at the Laon aire, then thinking about this morning's debacle concerning the cold showers we opted to head for the camp site at at La Frére. As we neared the place it became clear that this was no rural hideaway, the adjacent towns of Chauny and Tergnier seem to have sprawled accidently into a new town; when we finally tracked down where the campsite was, it was situated next to some kind of mini-banlieue. When we discovered that the camp site had closed we were more relieved than disappointed. 

Instead we headed south for about 20km to the aire at Cucy-le-Chateau. This proved an inspired accidental discovery. The aire is not free, to use it you need to negotiate an incomprehensible credit card system that for €5 per day gives you a code to access the service point and toilet cabin (shed). The place is maintained beautifully and the site is overlooked by the ruins of Chateau de Cucy, which in the medieval period was one of the largest fortifications in France.

Sunset on the walls of Cucy-le-Chateau.

Next morning we decided to explore the castle. It's a steep climb and none too clear as to how you reach the ramparts. Part way up the steep road an enterprising local has planted a vineyard. The vine clad slopes under the deep blue sky, overlooked by the castle's curtain walls and semi-circular bastions gave Picardy the look of the Midi this morning.

more typical of landscapes 400 miles further south

We met three older chaps out walking, they pointed us to a small gate which led to the path that circumnavigated the walls. We had not gone far before we were joined by a herd a goats who trotted along happily behind us. Eventually we reached the hilltop settlement of Cucy-le-Chateau which is clustered around the castle's gatehouse. It was all very unexpected, a great aire, a lively small village, an interesting walk, and a spectacular goat infested castle. The joys of motorhomes, "All good" as the lovely Gill is wont to remark.

A path circles the castle

with friendly goats

in fact, exceptionally friendly goats..

Outside the castle on the hill-top is a collection of mainly 18th century buildings

Fortified churches are typical of the area

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Charleville Meziere - Poetry, Puppetry not Pottery

As the name suggests, Charleville Meziere is a composite place comprising of a number of communities merged together to found one city, a bit like Buda and Pest or the five towns that comprise Stoke on Trent. It is fair to to say though, that aside from questions nomenclature, Charleville and Stoke don't compare at all. In fact, if you were looking at spurious anglo-comparisons, then you might claim that Charleville was an early 16th century Milton Keynes as the entire place was a brand new city built from scratch by an Italian aristocrat, Charles de Conzacue. His plan was to counter the growing influence of Protestantism in the nearby city of Sedan, by filling his new town full of fervent Catholics.

The man who put Charles into Charleville

Places that are planned do tend to have a somewhat deadening uniformity about them. Charleville's main square is magnificent, but somewhat repetitive, and the streets that surround it follow a strict grid pattern which again creates a tedious effect. I am not a fan of France's stately cities built in the grand style, Bordeaux, Montpelier, Haussman's mid Nineteenth century remodelling of Paris's boulevards, all suffer from being magnificently dull. I don't think they appeal to English taste, we like the quirky and the idiosyncratic, revel in fortuitous juxtapositions, I think at heart we are drawn to the picturesque rather than the planned.

Big square

The Hotel de Ville has a certain Itanlianate look

An 'urban beach' had been set up for the summer

Charleville's two big claims to fame is that it is the birthplace of the poet Rimbaud and that it is the world centre for the art of puppetry. There is a museum for each. The Rimbaud museum is in an old mill by the river close to the camping municipal where we stayed. We did not visit it, I don't quite see the point of literary museums unless, like Wordsworth's Dove Cottage, the locale is an important influence on the writer's work.

In the case of Rimbaud, he hated the conservative atmosphere of Charleville, could not wait to escape the clutches of his controlling mother. He absconded in his teens to live a bohemian life. He became the lover of the poet Verlaine, and generally took to being an 'enfant terrible' producing pained and anguished poetry, well at least for five years up until the age of 21, after which he did not write another word. The last 16 years of his life up until his death at the age of 37 were spent as a merchant and traveller in Yemen and Ethiopia. Given this unconventional life, his work was much admired by later counter-culture figures such as William Burroughs Jack Kerouac and Bob Dylan. Charleville appears to be attempting to capitalise on this connection, organising a festival of 'Literature Maudite'.

My failed attempt to look 'maudites' - instead I look slightly constipated....

The museum of the marionette is to be found in an old monastery tucked away behind the Place Ducale. The buildings also houses the Institut International de la Marionnette [which aims to celebrate and develop the art of puppet making and performance. We decided to give this a miss too, which may have been an error as it probably would have been interesting.

The Musee Marionette - and its famous clock.

Some of the puppets look positively horrific....

The museum features a famous animatronic clockwith a golden headed puppet which somewhat bizarrely has a puppet theatre where its midriff should be. During daylight hours when the clock strikes the hour the giant comes to life, the curtains open and clockwork puppets perform a little scene. Of course we arrived at ten past the hour so had just missed the 3pm. performance. We headed to a cafe in main square, had two small coffees and shared a large cream cake while we waited for the next show.

Coffee time!

View from the table..

View of the table...

the verdict..a religeuse experience.

We arrived back at the clock a few minutes before four, and were soon joined by about a dozen or so others eager to watch the show. As the hand notched towards the hour the giant golden head twitched a couple of times then the wooden shutters opened to reveal a small stage veiled behind a gauze curtain. Two recumbent figures seemingly piled one on top of the other could be seen faintly, they twitched suggestively for a few seconds then the shutters, well, did what shutters do. Whatever was meant to happen certainly was not this; after a moment of silent bemusement the crowd burst into laughter, sensing they had witnessed an minor epic of inadvertent failure, proving perhaps that in life shared moments of disappointment can be more memorable than collective delight.

The Four o'clock fail

Charleville is worth a visit I think, though a day is probably quite sufficient to enjoy what it has to offer. The camping municipal is in a pleasant park next to the river and only a ten minute walk to the Place Ducale. At €20 it is the most expensive place we stayed on our 'budget trip'. Annoyingly the hot water failed in the morning so we did not manage to get good showers, which was the main reason we decided to stay at the site, rather than in the free aire right outside the gates.

a nice traditional shopfront

Rimbaud pops-up everywhere, even at the bakers.

The camping municipal is modern and close to the town centre.

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