After a quiet night we woke just before 8am to a beautiful sunrise.
We travelled by free motorway to Boulogne, then on the D901 to Montreuil. This is the 3rd road in from the coast, and was very quiet.   This road runs quite high up, and very straight, through lovely farming country.   We took the D939 across to Arras - we have used this road before, a lot of it is dual carriage way, very straight and very empty . Between Arras and Cambrai we found a huge HyperU and got fuel at 1.24e /litre - less than a £1   !!!    We also got some silicon mastic and a gun so that Rob could seal around the fridge/freezer, so we can use it on gas again and stay in an Aire tonight.
When we got to Cambrai we got onto the ring road to start our First Mission on this trip.

When doing our Family History I discovered that my Great Grandfather's cousin, James Parnell had died, aged 20yrs, of gas wounds in the First World War and was buried at Awoingt, just outside Cambrai.
We found the village but could not see the usual green and white sign for a military cemetery.
We were just retracing our steps when Rob spotted the big white cross in the distance.   We made our way there and 2 vans of gardeners from CWWGC were just leaving.



We found the grave and discovered that the gardeners had actually been working on that row.
The cemetery is on quite high ground looking out over rolling farmland.
James was in the Machine Gun Corps and others who died on the same day were from the Royal Fusiliers, so perhaps there was some sort of battery on the higher ground.    He died on the 30th Oct 1918,    so near to the end of the war and almost 100 yrs ago.     As we were there, the sky darkened and it started to rain, which made it seem an even more desolate spot.
We went back onto the Cambrai ring road and then turned off to Marcoing , and found the MH Aire, which we had stayed at earlier in the summer.   Luckily there was plenty of room.


We went for a walk down through the small town and looked at the lock on the industrial canal.
Marcoing had been held by the Germans for most of WW1    and been smashed to pieces in the tank battle for Cambrai.      There are 2  British military cemeteries nearby.