5 Days by bike: Day One

Day one

Day One then, and we set of from the Ibis in Albert, heading the back roads towards our first major stop of the day, the Hawthorne Ridge crater.

On our way we stop at Crucifix Corner in Aveluy ⁽¹⁾, where Ivor Gurney, the poet and composer wrote the verse of the same name.

A few little uphills later and we arrive at Blighty Valley Cemetery in Authuille. It’s a new one to me: beautifully kept as they all are. Ttoday the gardeners are there making sure the graves are tended and the CMWG standards are kept up. This cemetery holds 1027 graves, 536 of them are ‘Known unto God’. Figures for unknown graves vary between 190 000 and 200 000.

We pass Thiepval and pay a brief visit to the Ulster Tower before passing along the Ancre and up the hill to the Newfoundland Memorial in Beaumont Hamel.

Our first formal stop of the day is scheduled to be the Hawthorne Ridge Crater, which, at 7.20am on 1 July 1916, saw the start of the battle of the Somme. My lovely clients agree that we park our cycles at the Memorial Park and try and find the walking route over the hill to the crater rather than take the road past Auchonvillers.

It’s impossible for a new visitor to simply walk through the Memorial Park, so we tarry a while before finding the route through. While the crater is very close as the crow flies, rural etiquette means we follow the official path – a mile or two through Beaumont itself. It’s an easy walk and it allows us to discover some other war memorabilia, including photographs of the village.

The explosion under the ridge was the very first action of the Battle of the Somme.

The ten minutes between the explosion and the 7.30 start of troop movement meant the Germans had time to regroup and reinforce, leading to some of the huge losses now synonymous the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Geoffrey Malins caught the action on his camera, and the short video is now one of the best-known pieces of footage from the Great War.

Malins also captured the lines of troops waiting to enter the Sunken Lane, our next stop in this area and the site of those huge losses when the pre-warned German troops cut them down as they tried to attack towards the village of Beaumont.

Back at the Newfoundland Memorial Park to look at this well-maintained park more detail. The landscape shows preserved German and Allied frontlines, as well as communication trenches and other defences. The park is overlooked by the magnificent Caribou (one of six: five on the Western Front and one at Gallipoli).

The front lines at the park show horrifyingly clearly how close they were to each other – in some places throwing distance apart.

It’s back on the bikes after the park and a lovely down hill to the Ancre Valley before a very steep climb to the Ulster Tower and then on to Thiepval where, between us, we find distance relatives and friends, including Fatty Pringle, of ‘We Two from Heaven’⁽²⁾.

It’s downhill back into Albert for a dinner in the centre before we head back to our hotel, weary, slightly grubby, but excited about our second day.

(1) Crucifix Corner was the name given to several road or track junctions on the Western Front where there was a wayside crucifix.

(2) We Two from Heaven, James Whyle. Publisher Jonathan Ball.