5 Days by bike: In the car for day three

It’s a cold, dark and miserable day and the skies are heavy with rain. It’s the first day that has suggested Autumn, so I’m glad we’re in the car.

The shortest distance between Albert and Ypres is just 137km but taking that route means you miss out on some of the finest of WW1memorials, and our circuitous route will take to Vimy Ridge, the Notre Dame de Lorette Necropolis, Neuve Chapelle, the Portuguese Military Cemetery, Ploegsteet and Messines Ridge before arriving in Ypres.

As expected, my guests are bowled over by the scale and size of Vimy Ridge and we spend a long time walking around and through the magnificent monument at the height of the ridge which gives a natural and unobstructed view of the Douai Plain.

A guided walk through the preserved trenches also shows the communication trenches and the small, claustrophobic areas the men waited before exiting for battle. It’s damp, cold and scary.

While Vimy Ridge is a story of the Canadians, it is also one of the Royal Flying Corp, who despite losing 191 aircraft the first week and determined opposition, managed to succeed in their pivotal support mission; and the story of 1^st Moroccan Division, who managed to take, and hold the ridge briefly in 1915. There is a memorial to them in the park.

We’re a long time at Vimy Ridge and make the decision to forgo the visit to the Notre-Dame-De-Lorette outside of Arras, and the impressive Ring of Remembrance with it’s 580 000 names. We head straight to Neuve Chapelle and the Portuguese Military Cemetery along the D947.

The Battle of Neuve Chapelle took place in March 1915, when the ‘it will all be over by Christmas’ assumption met real life, and a major effort was undertaken to loosen the German hold on Lille. Two army Corps took part, including the Indian Corp.

The memorial commemorates 4661 Indian soldiers with no known grave.

Close to one million Indian troops served overseas with almost 60 000 losing their lives. They served on the Western Front, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Gallipoli and German East Africa. In addition to the troops, there were almost 500 000 who served as ‘non-combatants’ or labourers.

The Portugues Military Cemetery is just 150 yards down the road from the Indian Memorial

Portugal, England’s oldest ally, entered the war in 1916 after repeated German attacks on their shipping and troops were deployed to France in 1917. They suffered significant losses during the Battle of La Lays in 1918 where eight German divisions totalling around 100 000 men attached the Portuguese line containing just 20 000 defenders. 327 Officers and 7 098 soldiers were either killed or seriously injured. Most of the dead are buried here.

It's a long and windy road toward the Ploegsteet 14-18 Experience and then the Christmas Truce Memorial a little way out the village. Enough has been said about the Christmas Truce, and whatever the truth, it’s to be believed that it started with four unarmed German soldiers leaving their trench and walking towards the British. The resultant lull in fighting allowed for football games and for the troops to collect and bury bodies.

On to Caterpillar Ridge and Hill 60 in Zillebeke.

Hill 60 is of the ‘Gentlemen, we may not change History in the morning, but we will certainly change Geography’ fame – the words said by General Harington to assembled gentlemen of the press on the eve of the Battle of Messines and the detonation of the 19 mines between here and Ploegsteert.

It is said that the sound could be heard in 10 Downing Street by Prime Minister David Lloyd George. This is unlikely, but there is evidence that tremors were detected on the Isle of Wight, some 280 km’s away.

Mine warfare developed when the war became static and trench warfare became the norm. It wasn’t possible to send soldiers out across no-man’s land to lay shallow mines, so the only other method was to dig tunnels underneath the enemy trenches and then fill them with explosives.

One of the biggest advantages of tunnelling (as it was called) lay in the quantity of explosives that could be delivered: 60 tonnes in the case of Vauquois in Verdun in June 1916. Here, Caterpillar Ridge was undermined by 32 000 kgs and Hill 60 by 24 000 kgs.

After the war, the trenches were filled in, but the area is littered with debris from the war, including the craters from the mines. We are reminded that this area is, effectively, a mass grave for soldiers and our rambling over the fortifications and depressions have a sombre tone.

It’s the end of day three, and we head to the beautiful little ‘City of Peace’ Ypres to rest, and get ready for a long day tomorrow.