France. Saint Avold to Glisy, via Villers-Bretonneux.
Wednesday 8/5/13
I think Europe is determined to make us struggle through the last few weeks of our trip by hounding us with bad weather. A month ago people were talking about the coldest, longest winter in forty years, and it still hasn't finished.
Even so, some of the flowers are making a valiant attempt at pretending it's spring. These were in a small garden outside our hotel room.
That was unfortunately the end of the day for anything bright and colourful. We rode out to the motorway and it was cold, wet, grey, and raining. Then the thunder started. For those of you that don't ride, motorcycle helmets don't have windscreen wipers, and you can't wipe your helmet visor often enough to keep it clear. Vision is an issue.
We rode for a few hours then when it became so grey that the road and the sky were the same colour, and I was struggling too differentiate between the two so we stopped for lunch.
After a nice lasagne we were back on the road and the weather had cleared a little so the going was a lot easier.
After four hundred kilometres our wheels were in Villers-Bretonneux. This French town holds Australia very close to it's heart because of what our Diggers did here on the Western front, coincidentally on April 25th, in 1918. The connection is very obvious as soon as you enter the town.
You see signs like this...
I think this means that Robinvale in Victoria is a sister town.
The school in town was paid for by Victorian school children, many of them sons and daughters of fathers who died here.
One of the main streets in town.
The Melbourne bar. One of many Aussie named businesses.
To be honest I knew nothing about this town, or what happened here, until I started researching this trip. After I discovered it's history, it was somewhere I had to visit.
You'll find the full story at this website:
http://www.museeaustralien.com/en/?A_little_History...
It was pretty late so we had a quick ride through and realised there were no hotels here, so we rode on to Glisy and found a bed for the night.
On the way there we rode past the Adelaide Cemetery which is now home to a lot of fallen Aussie soldiers.
Once we were in Glisy we did our usual supermarket food buy up. While we were in the shopping centre we found a very surprising shop.
Everything you would ever need.
Shotguns, rifles, etc.
Inspecting the selection of handguns. Have a look at the ammunition on the back wall. Security? Um, no.
It had been a long day and we were pretty happy to hit our hotel room. We'll head back into Villers-Bretonneux tomorrow morning for a good look around, and to pay our respects to the fallen Diggers.
And, the decision has been made, the bike has to be sold. It's a bloody brilliant bike and is listed on ebay here:
Hi Guys, lovely pictures as usual !!! Have a safe trip hback down under, I hope the bike finds another life with people similar to you...love to you both Roger
ReplyDeleteThanks Roger, I hope it goes to a good home as well. As you know, it's a bloody good bike and we'll miss it when we get home.
Delete