Day 09: The Hills are alive with the sound of tired cyclists....

Monday June 22, 2009, 51 km (32 miles) - Total so far: 351 km (218 miles)

• World > Europe > France > Picardie > Auchonvillers  - map

• World > Europe > France > Nord-Pas-de-Calais > Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise  - map

I realised last night that I missed a bit of the story from yesterday, and in some ways it was the most important.... we were sitting in Avril Williams restaurant yesterday early evening and she was talking with a few french guys who had obviously come in to see her, and I asked if it was OK if we went to see her museum... I was thinking that she would simply let us in.... it turns out that the older of the guys she was talking to is the french guy (Andre) who has collected almost all of the items in the museum since he was 9 years old....!!!... and Andre was very keen on showing us around himself.... and what an experience it was too...!... he told us the story of sooo many of the pieces, and how they worked... some of which we would never have worked out otherwise...!... in the end it was a shame that he had to go, but it really made a good day great...!... (topped off with some home-cooked beef bourgignon from Avril...!)

I've also added the only two photos that I could get from the memory card yesterday to yesterdays page.... though they're not that interesting....

... this was Drew last night outside the ocean villas restaurant....

We set off a little late than we usually do for a 50km ride, just before 10am, and the first 8 to 10 kms were acceptable, but tiring.... I we were both wondering whether it was going to be like this for the rest of the day.... well luckily it turned out not to be... the hills were a lot gentler after that (except for one more brutal slope), but that made our progress a lot easier... 

Since the journeys from today onwards take us away from the Western Front, we weren't expecting too many WW1 cemeteries, if any.... this was one that we came across near courouscelle (not sure of the spelling?)... we didn't disturb much at the cemetery except for a Dutch woman having a pee on the grass cutting pile...!!!... moving swiftly on, there were some nice inscriptions on the gravestones here...

btw, apologies for posting too many pictures of gravestones... it's just something that overwhelms you when you see so many of them... and that I am walking past soooo many without even reading them, and yet each one was a life stopped short almost 100 years ago....!

These were photos of some of the countryside that we were passing... and some with me in them...!!!!!!!! (handsome devil, etc...) 

Just as we were coming into St Pol this afternoon, we came across another cemetary.... what was interesting about this one was the dates of the cemetery... it was 1918 - 1920... and as was picked up on by the Lovely Liz, they might have passed away from Spanish Flu whilst still out here, as that came right after the end of WW1.... this actually made me think quite a bit... the fact that they had made it through the war, and even passed the armistice.... and then a flu virus was what got them in the end is a particularly sad thing... 

We finally got to the hotel... the hotels from yesterday onwards are not the Ibis type that we were staying in... they're much more local B+Bs style... the buildings of this one are very nice... 

Day 10: call me Gonzales.... Speedy Gonzales...!