Day 9 Sunday 9 April 2017

I will apologise for the paucity of photos, it is taking more than 5 minutes to upload 1 photo due to the poor quality wi-fi, but still we soldier on.

A couple of interesting observations.  The further you get out into the provences the less English is spoken.  The other thing is the tolerance of animals in the cafes, bars and restaurants.  I was having dinner the other night at a reasonably classy restaurant and a couple came in with a great big hairy german shepherd.......and they had a dog with them as well!  Nobody batted an eyelid, and the dog went to sleep under the table.

For dinner that night I had a pork terrine and guinea fowl.  The guinea fowl had a choice of mustard sauce or raspberry sauce, I chose the mustard sauce which overpowered it a bit.  On Friday night I went to a  restaurant that I had previously been to with Flashy.  I ordered the roast cockerel avec frites and salad......it came out as a whole chook on a plate surrounded by chips and a minute amount of salad, delicious!  I followed this up with profiteroles.

Last night dinner was by the Somme river.  There are a whole lot of restaurants along the river, all different styles and cost.  It was nearly a warm night so it was quite pleasant sitting by the river.  I had stuffed ravioli with a cream sauce and sliced ham on it, and finished with a taster plate of little desserts.  This was accompanied by a pitcher of bordeaux.

Today was another stunning spring day, probably 20 degrees and me without a pair of shorts or even a short sleeved shirt.  I am certainly glad I bought my gloves and wooly hat.

The Federal Govt are building a TGW interpretive centre at the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneaux.  This is the main Australian memorial on the Western front and where they hold the ANZAC day dawn services.  The plan to build this museum/interpretive centre here has been the subject of some debate by the experts in the field, including the volunteers of the Thursday PM shift at the Shrine.  It is only a building site at the moment so it is hard to tell how it will look when completed, hopefully it will be OK.  I will try and attach a couple of photos.

Whilst I was there today there was a school group from Melbourne there as well, probably 20 or 30 kids and teachers.

I'm typing this in the bar of the hotel and six fully armed soldiers just went past.

After visiting the VB memorial I drove to the Australian Corps Memorial at Le Hamel.  I have criticised this memorial in previous blogs.  It is out of the way, lonely, windswept, subject to vandalism and the toilets have been locked and/or out of order for the last 7 years that I am aware of.  Anyway there were 3 Australians there and they were from the Dept of Veterans Affairs (DVA), and they were doing a recce of the area for the 100th anniversary commemoration ceremonies for the Battle of Hamel in July next year.

Donna and Clair, here is the intersting thing, they knew Maurie's wife and had worked with her.  I recall Maurie telling us one night at Geoff and Helen's that his wife did this sort of organising at Gallipoli and mentioned it to them.

After driving back to Amiens, I decided to go for a walk and there was the largest street market I have ever seen.  The entire centre of Amiens was closed off and there were hundreds of market stalls in the main streets and side streets.  Most of the stalls were selling flea market stuff, but there were also food and drink stalls.  The streets were packed with people, must be a big day for the town.

Shaun, I didn't make it to the Paris - Roubaix, not muddy enough.

Off to Bullecourt tomorrow.

Hi Leanne, I just saw the footy scores, how is Evan coping???