‘M off - Eifel, Luxembourg and Belgium

Day 10….

Up at the crack to get into the shower before the great unwashed.

Then, off to the hypermercado for beers and to find breakfast, both of which were successful.

The Chimay market was in full swing:

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Including one large stall, specialising in what I guess you’d call ‘Unprepared lunch’:

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The signs are now up, with practice commencing at Gary Cooper:

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Day 10….

Up at the crack to get into the shower before the great unwashed.

Then, off to the hypermercado for beers and to find breakfast, both of which were successful.

The Chimay market was in full swing:

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Including one large stall, specialising in what I guess you’d call ‘Unprepared lunch’:

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The signs are now up, with practice commencing at Gary Cooper:

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I’d get free entry
 
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Excellent........I do hope they combine the drawing with the Knobbly knees competition :D
 
Great trip reporting. Looks like we are a day behind you. Going to Chimay today.
 
Is Wapping a OK?
It has been over 48H since his last report from the Chimay refugee camp :D
Him buying a pack of 9 bog rolls, was a bit disconcerting .
 
Is Wapping a OK?
It has been over 48H since his last report from the Chimay refugee camp :D
Him buying a pack of 9 bog rolls, was a bit disconcerting .

Might have done a Steptoe-donned his sunglasses, logged on to Grindr, and gone on a …..er…….bender
 
Day two…..

The answer to the great mystery of the strange strap, taped to the lady’s screen, can now be revealed. By chance she was loading up her bike, when I was leaving, so I took the opportunity to engage her in bikermate banter. It is, to be fair, a bodge of quite remarkable genius. The mount for her sat nav had broken, the strap is there to support the mount and GPS device in place.

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Now that I’d answered on of life’s great mysteries, I could set off to ride the 280 mile cross-country (non-motorway) route to the border with Germany.

Leaving St Omer at 07:45, I trundled my way to St Pol for breakfast , to a cafe and excellent bakery I know, with very good parking just across the road:


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The bakery was quite busy, not least as buying bread is a national sport in France:

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My breakfast croissant (and my lunch) bought, I could sit and enjoy my coffee in the cafe next door:

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Then it it was off again, along the D roads of France, skirting Arras and Cambrai, to stop about an hour and a half later at another cafe I know, for an Orangina.

The cafe is on the main drag through the small town of Inchy. It’s a useful place know as it’s a good place to stop after rolling off the Chunnel if you then take the motorway to Cambrai:

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It’s as French as you like, with (naturally enough) the horse racing and Lotto being run:

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The owner is a nice chap, who now half recognises me, not least as I have stopped there quite regularly and always try to engage with him in Franglais.

As 280 miles across France and Belgium on D roads is a decent schlep, I didn’t stop too often en-route to take pictures. But, as I have ridden the roads quite a few times, I mark my progress in my mind with things that I recognise or half-remember. A good example is the large church of St Peter at Soire le Chateau. It appears like some sort of strange thing from science fiction, as you ride into the town on the dead straight road:

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Somewhere along the way, I crossed from France into Belgium, though cannot remember seeing the border signs. The only clue I got was when I noticed that the town and road signs had changed.

To be continued as it’s time for breakfast… and it’s raining! Hoorah!
We used your recommendation of the Cafe De Le Pais and Boulangerie on our recent trip. Very popular it was to, so thank you. We were a little surprised that the in the Mme in the cafe was more than happy for us to consume food from the Boulangerie on her premises, although we did rack up quite a large bill! She also instructed me how to ask for the bill in French properly.
 
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Day 13 - Chimay to St Omer

As I was up and about earlier than I had planned, I rewrote the days route, to miss out the motorway between Cambrai and St Omer completely.


It hadn’t been my intention to stop to take pictures too often, but (as usual) something or somewhere caught my attention.

The Sambre-Oise canal:

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The WW1 cemetery at Le Cateau. The British site shares the ground with the German cemetery, and was (when I stopped) receiving attention from the War Graves’ gardening crew:

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Excellent. That classic racing event looks like a lot of fun.
Thank you again for taking the time to post and share. 👍
 
The cemetery also includes some French graves, in the German half:

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And these unusual ones, which I couldn’t work out:

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At first, I thought they might be the Russian graves, referred to in the information, but the names do not look right. My only assumption is that they are German mass burials, reinterred from other sites, perhaps?

The British portion included the graves of two German women. I can only assume they were nurses?

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As usual, the German graves are very often double or triple stacked:

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And, perhaps most poignantly of all, the German Jewish dead are buried alongside their fallen non-Jewish comrades. I can only wonder what became of these soldiers’ families with the next 30 or so years. It is easy to assume that they may well all have been murdered:

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Looking back over the cemetery, at the rolling open fields, stretching away as far as the eye can see, it is hard to imagine that this was once all churned to pieces, a real ‘killing ground’ for four years:

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PS I realise now that I used the cross pedestal as a table for my helmet, which I am a bit ashamed of. Though the War Graves crew also used it for the Stihl leaf blower.
 
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