It's a Long Way to Tipperary

Sunday 5th May 2013

The area we were visiting was pretty small. No place was more than about 15km from another and most were much less.

Setting the SatNav for the Thiepval Memorial we set off from Ocean Villas. The memorial stands out on the landscape so it would not be hard to find, but better to play it safe…my navigational skills are infamous!

On the way, and very hard to miss, we stopped at the Ulster Tower. An impressive but strange sight in the middle of all the fields. This had been highlighted during our planning as somewhere that had a café and, although we had just finished lunch, it was such a nice day that sitting outside in the sunshine with a proper mug of tea, and some chocolate chip flapjack, seemed the right thing to do.



We had company. A couple of bikers who had come over from Northern Ireland were chilling too, along with some “locals” (their accents led me to believe they were not French), and we got chatting to the lady running the place.

Just off to the side of the cafe was a small “museum” giving the history of the Irish regiments and their role in World War One. It made very interesting reading and a change from some of the more general information that we had seen before.

A great imposing, yet unimposing, place to stop and look around.

But, onwards. Thiepval awaited and we were but a stone’s throw away.

The Thiepval Memorial

Car parked, we entered the visitor centre.

This by far contained the richest information of any of the visitor centres we had visited. The story of the war, and specifically the Somme area, was told in over twenty parts on displays as you walked around. We did.

There was a small room showing various old documentaries and films about the area. We sat down in the darkness and watched transfixed as we learned about the history of the memorial and about the local conflict.

Finally we exit the building into the bright sunshine and head for the memorial itself.



This large and impressive memorial was designed by Edwin Lutyens, the same person who designed The Cenotaph in London.

It is another of the memorials to the missing and has the names of over 72000 missing allied soldiers carved on the walls.

The plaque on the wall of the memorial does a much better job of explaining than I ever could:




Inside the memorial the various battlefields are remembered. These are a couple of the ones my grandfather had mentioned.



The sun is still shining brightly and the sky is blue with wisps of cloud.

We walk out of the back of the memorial into the cemetery.

This is split into two parts:

The French…




…and the British Commonwealth.

At the end is a memorial with the now familiar sword and cross.

We spend some time here. It is quiet, peaceful, the day is beautiful and we have nowhere else to be.

Finally we leave.

Lost in France

Up until now I have been extolling the virtues of the SatNav. It had guided us without fail to all the destinations we had asked.

Today it let us down.

I have found that the built-in POIs are usually pretty good, so when I searched for and found the Albert Ibis under the Hotels Near Me, I naturally assumed we would be directed to the Ibis Hotel in Albert.

Wrong. Fast forward about thirty minutes and we are sitting in the driveway of a farm.

My fault entirely. I trusted the SatNav when we had seen the McDonald’s (another story) a few kilometres back.

Needless to say, we found the hotel and managed to make ourselves understood (without having to raise our voices and speak slowly).

The next day we would be having more adventures before finally heading home.

To be continued….