Adventures With Harvey

Paying our respects… and then a festival!

Today it is hot. Very hot! And it’s going to get worse tomorrow!! At I sit here in Antwerp, Belgium at 4.45pm it’s currently 35deg – and tomorrow the forecast high is 39! However the weather is nothing if not changeable, within a couple of days it’s supposed to be back into the mid-low 20’s with some rain to come.

Ever since my days studying history in the 5^th form at Westlake Boys High School, the topic has held great fascination for me. Not sure why, that’s just the way it is, so a visit to Flanders’ Fields in Belgium has always been on my bucket list. I realise that for some of my longsuffering audience, these blog posts have perhaps been a little too heavily weighted in this regard (and I have appreciated the feedback from those who have given it) however, I promise that once this particular edition is complete, we’re largely done with the large doses of war history henceforth.

For your author and his lovely travelling companion, any visit to a WWI cemetery is a moving, sobering and emotional experience. Not only the sheer numbers but also how young they were. You walk amongst the epitaphs and see row upon row of young New Zealand men (and of course many of other nationalities), the majority of whom were the age our children are now, or younger when they perished. Then you look at some of the images or movie footage and read some of the stories and you realise what this war cost. Not just in terms of casualties but also the grief of loved ones who were left behind and the communities that were changed forever.

Our first stop on arrival into Belgium was Messines which is a sleepy little village on a ridge that was the site of a major WWI battle involving a load of New Zealanders. The Commonwealth War Grave there has a special New Zealand memorial and the cemetery is filled with silver fern headstones. For those interested in a small amount of detail, New Zealand tunnellers burrowed their way right underneath the German front lines and laid a bunch of mines. When these were detonated simultaneously at 3.10am on 7 June 1917, the explosion was heard throughout Europe and apparently even rattled teacups in London. The battle was actually a success in terms of meeting its objective, however by the time the kiwis were relieved a couple of days later, more than 700 of them were dead and many times that wounded. Messines has many references to New Zealand - outside the rebuilt church there is a large NZ map inlaid into the paving along with another Ngā Tapuwae memorial like we saw in Le Quesnoy, and you’ll also find a bronze of a NZ soldier in the town square.

That evening we parked up next to a lake in the outskirts of Ypres where we stayed for the next 3 nights. For the first time our bikes really came into their own – all the Ypres and Passchendaele war memorials and museums that we wanted to visit were within a 10km radius so we were able to do 2 full days of exploring totally on the bikes. It’s just so much easier leaving Harvey in the one spot, the bikes are pretty effortless to ride and there’s never any problem finding parking. [Or for that matter any height restrictions. We occasionally find these in supermarket carparks and they’re a complete nuisance in a Harvey!]

Since we’ve got back into Harvey, neither of us have really been inclined to eat out much at all. Firstly, because we’re feeling quite broke after paying for a big lot of Harvey repairs and replacing filched e-bikes, but also the coach tour was very bad for our waistlines! Too many buffet breakfasts and restaurant meals, so it’s been lovely to prepare fresh salads for dinner, along with a nice piece of something cooked on the bbq. On our last evening in Ypres we visited the Menin Gate for the 8pm Last Post, then just wandered the town square afterwards, stopping for a quiet refreshment or 2 along the way. A bugler has played the Last Post nightly at 8pm at Menin Gate since 1929 (apart from 4 years during WWII) – it is a truly humbling and moving experience and something your author has always wanted to attend. Did you know there are some 55,000 names listed there?

We’re also learning what to buy where, at least to some extent. Before leaving the UK we stocked the freezer up on smoked salmon and bacon (British bacon is AMAZING, not like the thin watery stuff we get back home), both of which are hard to come by in France, also a few loaves of brown bread to be frozen – yes, the French don’t really do grainy bread, it’s pretty much all just baguettes and croissants. Before leaving France we likewise stocked up on something else quite important – wine! We have been astonished at how cheap good quality plonk is in the land of cheese and snails. Your faithful correspondent and his wife are hardly wine snobs, however we have done tastings at many NZ wineries and are enthusiastic amateurs. In France you really don’t need to spend much for a very acceptable every-day bottle, about half what we'd spend in NZ… and given we’re heading for Scandinavia which we’ve heard is the most expensive place in Europe, a good stock up was in order. So, there are now bottles of French wine stashed in every nook and cranny of Harvey, hopefully enough to last us until we’re passing through again later in the year. 😊

During the course of our research, we decided that there were just a handful of main sites to see in and around Passchendaele, although you could spend many days if you wanted to do a comprehensive WWI tour of the area. A good friend back home had given us a printed guide to the area which showed all the New Zealand-centric sites and memorials which was super-helpful with our planning. At Passchendaele there is an excellent multi-sensory museum which is one of our favourites so far because it really brought to life what a soldier’s lot on the front lines was like. You could take a sniff of some mustard gas, hear the pounding of the guns and explore a replica underground dugout 8m below the surface, complete with the accompanying sounds as you entered each room within the bunker. We visited the NZ memorial at Polygon Wood along with another at ‘s Gravenstafel (which the kiwi soldiers nicknamed Grab ‘n’ Stumble) and was the site where another 330 young kiwi soldiers met their fate – including Dave Gallagher, captain of the All Blacks 1905 Originals. While there we got chatting with a Belgian man on a bicycle who told us that an Aussie soldier was being interred at Tyne Cot Cemetery later that afternoon and, given it was on our list for the day, added some extra interest for sure.

But before that, Anita spotted a strawberry farm along with, I kid you not, a vending machine that sold strawberries and potatoes. Just like you would with your can of coke, in went a couple of € and out popped a punnet of freshly picked, delicious juicy strawberries. On the same corner we bumped into a mini-van with Americans on a guided tour and I was able to tag along enough to hear about the number of unexploded munitions that farmers in the area continue to dig up during ploughing each year. See the photo below for a load of rusty (and several presumably still live) artillery shells, hand grenades and the like. Apparently over the years there have been a few deaths amongst the farmers in Passchendaele due to explosions during ploughing. We also happened across a cheesery (is that a word?) where they first made cheese in Belgium. Refugees from the first war fled to France where they learned cheese-making techniques which they then brought back to the area. Of course a few supplements for our pre-dinner drinks were procured.

Tyne Cot is the largest Commonwealth war grave in the world with over 12000 headstones, over a third of which have the remains of an unidentified soldier beneath them. Sometimes his country or regiment is known, other times it’s only a grave with just the inscription “A soldier of the great war - known unto God”. Additionally at the cemetery is a massive curved wall listing the names of all Commonwealth soldiers who have no known resting place. We travelling Woodies were very moved as we walked around row upon row of the most beautifully kept graves and read name after name of the fallen.

To stumble across an actual funeral was also quite special. This unknown Aussie soldier had been accidentally unearthed from where he fell in 1917 but this day was being formally laid to rest. We were just so impressed with the effort made, the number of dignitaries and other people present, and the deference with which this chap was farewelled. It was a truly moving and unforgettable experience.

Talk about from one extreme to the other – guess where we ended up next? I’ll start by telling you that the annual Ghent Festival is the 3^rd largest in Europe behind Oktoberfest and one in Valencia… and that’s where the travelling Woodies rocked up for a visit. Running for 9 days but starting the day before we arrived, this festival is a celebration of culture, music, food, art and all things good! The whole town was heaving with people and every time you turned a corner there was another street performer, busker or music stage. Your faithful correspondent must admit to being a fan of live music, and at this festival he truly made a glutton of himself! Not only for music and other entertainment, but also the food – yes, for two days we dined on nothing but the famous Belgian frites, waffles, chocolate and… oh, I almost forgot – beer 😊. We’ve spent two wonderful days wandering the streets, stopping by anything that took our fancy, and generally just soaking up the atmosphere. It's been a blast!

Your faithful correspondent and his lovely wife really feel like little kids having all their treats at once - but we are truly having just the best time ever! Thanks once again for keeping us company, it’s our pleasure to share our adventures with you.

Lots of love

The travelling Woodies

Video Captions:
1. The end of the funeral for the unknown Aussie digger. 12000 souls buried here, hard to take it all in (with apologies for the very quiet commentary)

2. The Menin Gate in Ypres - last post is played every night at 8pm to honour the fallen

3. Random bell ringers at the Ghent Festival

4. Buskers drumming on buckets and pot lids

5. Live music at Ghent Festival

6. It looks like Elvis is alive in Ghent!

cheers from Belgium!

NZ memorial at Messines

too many silver ferns

New Zealand is famous outside the church at Messines

view from the top of the church bell tower. it's hard to believe that 100 years ago this was just mud and a load of rubble - someone at the time said there were hardly 2 bricks on top of each other where they had been placed