Cool with drizzly rain most of the day, 12-15deg, 48km, av. 12.8km/hr, tot. 1251km. Today we entered our sixth country for this trip, Belgium.
Steady but light rain throughout the night but it had eased to drizzle by the time we left for Ypres at 8:40am . It was so nice to be back on cycle paths, mostly beside canals.
We made good time to our first stop at Comines, a twin town in France and Belgium, where for the life of us we couldn't find a coffee shop. Saw six pharmacies, five tobacco shops and eight hairdressers, but not one coffee shop. Found a baker though and had a nice ham and cheese bread roll and an almond croissant. Good fuel for cold days. Comines had the biggest and flashiest Town Hall for such a small place we'd seen anywhere. The Cathedral was pretty special too, but what about the caffeine addicts shop?!
We then hopped on a great off-road cycle path (must be out of France) nearly all the way to Ypres. About 5km out Wendy made a surprising discovery when she noticed a sign to a memorial for Hill 60 and the 1st Australian Tunneling Company, Greg's Grandfather's (on his Mum's side) unit during WW1. So we went for a look. 1 ATC played a significant role in this battle and many of them, along with British and Germans solders are permanently buried under the hill where they were trapped by cave-ins caused by explosions or accidents while tunneling . Lucky for the Walker/Jenkins families Greg's Granddad, William (Bill) Jenkins, although wounded by mustard gas, survived the war. Greg says he was the kindest, most gentle and wonderful man you would ever want to meet despite what he had lived through during the War. If only he could be here today to tell us about his experiences beneath Hill 60. The whole hill is now preserved (as best that nature allows) as it was at the end of the war. The trenches, cave-in hollows and bunker holes/debris are all still clearly visible.
We arrived at Ypres at 2pm, despite the headwind and rain, (we both agreed that we'd prefer the rain to the wind) after a rather short but good day's ride.
Ypres is one of the prettiest towns we've been in this trip. It has a great old cobbled town square surrounded by lovely old buildings and a grand cathedral. There's a rather good WW1 Museum also in the town square. A 100m or so up the road of course is the famous Menin Gate, where the names of more than 54,000 "missing" British Empire soldiers from this area of battle in WW1 are inscribed. What awful staggering numbers!
Since 1928 the local Last Post Association (mostly volunteer firemen) have played the Last Post at 8pm each and every evening. It has become a wonderful tribute and a daily reminder to all of us of those brave men who paid the ultimate sacrifice. Lest We Forget. You couldn't help shed a tear during this Last Post.
A hearty pasta dinner and a beer capped off a memorable day. We are looking forward to exploring the area further tomorrow.